Anniversaries are always a time of celebration and this month Dark Age of Camelot celebrates our 20th anniversary! Look for notices throughout the month, and especially around the 10th, for news and details of how we're celebrating this amazing milestone :)

On with the Grab Bag!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions :)
 

Can you elaborate on the benefit of damage add buffs / spells whatever, primarily the melee damage add and the differences between the shaman one, for example, and the champion level versions. some are matter some are spirit etc. I also found an item with an 11.3 damage add buff, I'm assuming this is melee damage add bonus, so why is it not a physical damage versus say for instance what a reaver gets to greatly buff their styles?

Yes, all damage add buffs only affect melee swings, not spell casts and they are simply a way to add a small amount of damage to each melee swing. Damage adds’ damage type can theoretically be either magical or physical but neither type matters in terms of the actual damage dealt to a target.

The overall damage of damage adds is determined by the base, unstyled damage of a melee swing, with typical damage variance (which can cause lower damage melee hits to sometimes have higher damage add damage than some high damage melee hits). The damage adds’ damage is then hard-capped, not affected by resist buffs OR debuffs on the target, and is relatively static even as the damage of the overall melee swing increases. For this reason they are more beneficial to faster swinging classes and especially dual-wield classes.

There are some special damage add types like the Blademaster’s “Triple Wield” that provides a negation from being critically hit (in melee) for its duration in addition to its traditional damage add component as well as the Master Level “Faultfinder” damage add which deals high damage against object-only targets like doors. The other class, item, and champion level damage add abilities work as described above.

Is it intended that a realm can rebuy the protection obelisk even if the keep is under siege and one was already destroyed? Same for using the keep level upgrade tokens and using them if the keep is under siege.

Yes, this is currently intended. We’re open to changing this but once the inner keep’s door is opened it is be possible to kill the Master Stone Mason and prevent any further upgrades. We also don’t want to prevent realms from applying upgrades when a keep siege first begins if we can help it.

I understand that mentioned in 05/05/2017 grab bag, only Str, Con, Dex, and Qui buffs affect pets. Is this for both summoned and charmed pets? How does haste affect either type of pet and does haste work from Ring of Conflicting Forces ( https://tools.camelotherald.com/item/view/41012 ) ?

Yes, all pets whether summoned or charmed are affected in the same way by concentration buffs. Haste buffs do affect the melee swing speed of pets just like they do players; with normal concentration haste buffs, like the one from the Ring of Conflicting Forces and celerity spells both increasing the melee swing speed of pets.

What is the definition of a class ability - can you provide examples? What would the master level battlemaster 10th ability fall under?

In terms of categorization we think of “class” abilities as any non-realm ability a class trains at their trainer or earns for free as they level. So some class ability examples for a heavy tank would be Metal Guard, Fury, or a weapon style.

A Master Level ability, while still usable by a class or classes, is categorized separately since it is earned differently and not precisely part of the class itself. The same goes for realm and champion level abilities. If you need to spend realm skill points (or champion ability points) to acquire the ability, it’s a realm ability (or CL ability), not a class one; regardless of whether or not the ability is class-specific.

This may seem like a finer point, and to a large extent these categories don’t really matter when looking at classes as a whole, but when it comes to balance decisions it’s important to separate abilities into these different categories as each type can be a lever we use for balance.

For example, changing a Master Level ability like Bodyguard might be a class-defining ability for many Paladins or Warriors (among many other classes) but it’s not a “class” ability since those classes could choose a completely different Master Level path and, more importantly, because changing the Bodyguard ability to “balance” Paladins would affect so many other classes. So instead we treat something like Bodyguard as its own separate Master Level ability that is part of the Battlemaster ML path and if we wanted to hypothetically change it, we would need to ensure that its change would be balanced across not only the other ML paths but all of the classes it can be used by (including ones that can but don’t typically specialize in the Battlemaster path).

If instead, continuing the example, we wanted to adjust a Paladin’s armor factor chant, we would start the balance discussion at the ability and extend it to the class as a whole. We may look at other classes too and how they interact with the AF chant, but the discussion largely centers around a class (or at least 1 class archetype typically) and its impact on balance instead of around an entire ML or CL path and their impact on balance.

And sometimes the line blurs, like with the free RR5 realm abilities, which are class-specific realm abilities. FYI - we categorize these as class abilities too due to their uniqueness and because they do not directly cost realm skill points to earn.

Hope that helps!

Why can MTX mask patterns only be used for class specific armor types? For example, a lot of savages use the curative sunburst leather helmet since there is no available studded version therefore we are handicapped in customizing our character.

Armor patterns are clamped to a class’ highest equippable armor type in order to try and preserve class-silhouetting in RvR. Yes, a Savage could wear an actual cloth robe and equip a caster staff to try and fool enemies but their effectiveness would be very diminished too if they did. We don’t want to open the door for players to do this in look-only while actually still wearing their best equipment. Yes, sometimes this will overlap with and prevent patterning “usable” items but we feel that there’s still a great amount of room for customization within the patterning rules as they exist!

Thanks everyone, enjoy the weekend! :)