Age of Conan - Conqueror Revamp

Today marks what is believed to be the final revamps for the classes in Age of Conan. The Conqueror got their due, with a ton of changes in playability.

There is a lot of changes here from banners, to feats, to skills. It is massive.

Here are todays patch notes for more info. Better get reading!

CLASSES
ASSASSIN

• Fixed an issue where you could get soul fragments from Sprit of Nightfall while in poison stance.

BEAR SHAMAN

• Fixed an issue where you could not use Manifestation of Spirit until you were level 17.

CONQUEROR

The Conqueror buff system of Auras, Battle Cries, Formations, Orders and Commands has been streamlined and improved. Players now have 6 team abilities divided into two types of buffs: Disciplines and Formations. Players have 3 Disciplines and 3 Formations to choose from, and may have 1 discipline and 1 formation active at any time. During the course of a battle, a conqueror has the choice of either temporarily replacing his active formation with an aoe/team-effect banner, or replacing his active discipline with a more powerful solo buff. These actions may be achieved through new abilities granted to all Conquerors called "Plant Banner" and "Grant Technique." After the temporary effect has expired, the original buff which was replaced is reapplied.

Team Effects:

• Discipline: Retribution - grants melee and magic retribution damage.
• Discipline: Hoarfrost - grants armor and spell penetration.
• Discipline: Precision - grants hit rating.
• Formation: Fire Weave - grants fire combat rating and a fire damage proc.
• Formation: Skirmish - grants mana/stamina regeneration and bonus weapon damage.
• Formation: Thunderhead - grants evade and critical damage bonus increase.

Temporary Solo Effects (replaces the corresponding Discipline)

• Technique: Retribution - grants an absorb shield (scaling with your level, up to 750 points at level 80), while granting half the normal amount of armor, protection and retributive damage. There is also a particle effect for as long as the absorb shield lasts.
• Technique: Hoarfrost - grants critical rating and gives your attacks a chance to stack up both the Physical and Elemental Torment debuffs.
• Technique: Precision - grants increased weapon damage.

Team/Aoe Banners (replaces the corresponding Formation)

• Fire Weave Banner - inflicts fire damage to all enemies around the banner.
• Skirmish Banner - provides mana/stamina regeneration and a half-power "green" heal to all allies around the banner. This secondary heal follows the normal rule of ordinary team heals (maximum 2 "green" heals active on a target).
• Thunderhead Banner - provides bonus immunity chance and a reactive mana burn effect (triggered from being hit by a hostile spell) to all allies around the banner.
• All three banners have some obvious particle effect so you can see the area size.

Feat Changes

• Improved Inspire feat changed name to 'Resolute Advance.' This feat gives 10/20/30% root resistance, and when rooted the conqueror can use his charge to break the root effect and apply a 2/4/6 second root immunity.
• Whirlwind will now place Deep Wounds on targets it hits, if you have Deep Wounds trained.
• When consuming a Furious Inspiration stack of 10 with bladeweave, you will also get a critical increase.
• The Burst of Aggression knockback will now affect all enemies hit by that swing, not just one target.
• Power Counterstrike has changed position in the feat tree to where Improved Furious Inspiration used to be. This feat has been renamed 'Improved Retaliation' and now increases the retributive damage and duration of the Retaliation buff. It has a dependency link to Retaliation.
• Improved Furious Inspiration has been moved to row 6. It now also increases the critical chance of the Guard of Dancing Steel reactive damage hits by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Angel of Fury has been augmented. In addition to its current effect, when you perform a physical critical hit, you have a 50% chance of triggering a Furious Inspiration gain. You gain an additional +10% chance for each point in Improved Furious Inspiration, up to a 100% total chance.
• The Frostbite feat has been replaced with Scourge. This causes the reactive damage proc gained from Guard of Dancing Steel a 33% base chance of inflicting damage on enemies casting hostile spells on you. This chance gets increased by the Improved Dancing Steel feat. Scourge has moved down 1 tier and has no pre-requisite
• Guardsmans Feint has been renamed to Blessed Blade and is now a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of obtaining a buff when executing Hail of Furious Strikes or Bloody Hack that heals you by 1% the next 3 attacks.
• Cold Steel Feat renamed to Furious Strikes. This feat decreases reuse time on Hail of furious strikes comboline by 0.8 seconds per point up to a total of 4 seconds. In addition it also enhances the improved feint and feint combo line by increasing critical rating by 1.5/3/4.5/6/7.5% when used.
• Art of war now gives the Conqueror a stacking combat rating buff every time he inflicts critical damage.
• Tactical Mastery feat has been renamed to Hemorrhage, and increases damage from Bloodbath, Deep Wounds, Lacerate and Rend Flesh by 7.5/15% while Art of war is running.
• Quick Vengeance has been removed and replaced with Grievous Wounds. This new feat swaps positions with Lightning Steel. Grievous Wounds grants you 1/2/3/4/5% increased critical damage. Additionally, it causes the stamina cost of Rend Flesh procs to be decreased by 5/10/15/20/25% per target currently affected by your Bloodbath dot; affecting enough targets will cause Rend Flesh to cause you to gain stamina per proc rather than lose it.
• Bloodlust now enhances the Breach combos by granting a buff after use that increases the damage of your next combo finisher by 25%
• Improved Dancing Steel has been buffed to increase the reactive proc by 8/16/24/32/40% from 2/4/6/8/10%
• Improved Vitalize feat renamed "Improved Throat Slash" and moved position to row 6, column 1. This feat now extends the silence effect from throat slash by 1/2/3 seconds. The Improved Throat Slash also increases the critical damage bonus of the Guard of Dancing Steel reactive damage hits by 33/66/100%.
• The reactive damage from Guard of Dancing Steel is now able to critically hit.
• Bladeweave has swapped positions with Crippling Bloody Hack feat in the Brute tree.
• Steel Discipline changed name to Impervious Defense, and now grants 3/6% bonus armor.
• Lingering Fire weave now increases the critical chance of the fire weave proc by 5%
• Devastate has changed position in the feat tree, on same tier (cosmetic change).
• At Death's Door changed to give the conqueror 6/12/18% damage deflection if health drops below 25%. This buff can only be obtained once per minute.
• Moved At Death's Door to row 8, column 4.
• Lacerate has been changed to only tick every third second, to give bigger numbers. The overall damage of Lacerate has been slightly increased.
• When using Flashing Defense, Overcome the Odds, or Blessed Conquest you will now have a blocking buff cast on you, stopping you from using another of these abilities for 30 seconds.
• Mocking Sneer's hate increase on combo starters has been boosted significantly. Each feat point should now add 10% hate on combo starters in defensive stance.
• Improved Shield of Retribution has been renamed to Improved Retribution. It now increases the armor, protection, and retributive damage that you receive when using running Discipline: Retribution, and Technique: Retribution.
• Remorseless Aggression has changed to clear the Burst of Aggression cooldown when you or your group get a killing blow. It now has Burst of Aggression as a pre-requisite.
• The hate buff you get after using Burst of Aggression is now a friendly buff and not a hostile buff.
• Changed Lingering fireweave to increase the Critical chance of the fireweave proc by 5%
• The Ability - Cunning feat has changed. It is now 2 feats rather than 3. It now grants an ability that gives you -2%/-5% hate while active. It is now a "stance" toggle effect so can be turned on and off rather than needing to be used constantly. This feat now also passively increases the critical chance of the Lacerate, Deep Wounds, Rend Flesh and Improved Rend effects by 1%/2%, regardless of whether you have the Cunning buff running or not.
• The Fleet of Foot feat has been redesigned. It will now clear the cooldown on your Charge ability whenever you or someone in your team makes a kill.
• The Combo - Flashing Defense feat has been changed to Ability - Flashing Defense. This no longer grants you a combo, but instead grants you a new ability that gives you +100% evade chance for 8 seconds.
• Whirlwind now has a 10 seconds cooldown. When you use the Whirlwind combo, you will gain a stacking buff that increases your Whirlwind damage by 1% and Bloodbath damage-over-time damage by 2%. This effect can stack up to 5 times.
• Rend Flesh and Improved Rend can now critically hit. The Rend Flesh debuff name will no longer change as the stack builds up (it will always appear as Rend Flesh).
• The Lightning Steel feat has been augmented. In addition to its current ability, when you have the Lightning Steel buff effect active, your successful offhand attacks have a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to refresh the duration of your current Bladeweave effect.
• Bladeweave is no longer marked as a hostile debuff, and will now appear in your buff bar.
• Deep Wounds has been moved into the Carnage tree, and received a number of changes. The tick interval has been increased to 4 seconds, the overall damage increased, and it now has the normal chance to crit. This DOT can now also be applied from offhand attacks, not just primary hand attacks. The proc rate has been increased from 5 to 6 proc-per-minute. Each conqueror can now have their own Deep Wounds stack on the target, rather than there just being one. The way the damage is calculated has been changed and will now improve based on your weapon dps and strength. The DOT applied is now always called Deep Wounds, rather than changing per rank.
• Overcome the Odds has been redesigned. When used, it debuffs nearby enemies into healing you as they physically attack you. Additionally, it clears the cooldown of Retaliation when used.
• The War Lord's March feat has been removed. The War Lord feat will now additionally grant 6% out of combat movement speed in addition to its existing effects.
• Berserk Inspiration has been changed slightly. It now has an independent change to increment the Furious Inspiration stack from offhand attacks, at a significantly higher rate.
• Improved Furious Inspiration now also increases the health/stamina/mana the resurrected target spawns with by 18% per feat point, up to 100% with all 5 feat points trained.
• Some issues with Lacerate have been fixed. Lacerate now has the normal chance to critically hit. The name of Lacerate will no longer change based on the stack count. Multiple conquerors now generate multiple stacks (one per conqueror) of Lacerate, rather than a single stack.
• Reaping Blade feat now increases damage by "Bloodbath, Lacerate and Deep Wounds" by 5%.
• Both end tier feats in the Carnage tree now reduces the recast time of Rend Flesh by 5 seconds, for a total of 10 seconds reduction if both feats are trained.

Ability changes

• The Furious Resurgence resurrection ability has been split up and you will now receive an additional ability called Resurgence. Resurgence can only be used when you are out of combat, while Furious Resurgence can be used in combat, as before.An additional check has been added to both to see that your target is actually dead before using the ability, so that the ability will not allow itself to be used (and hence not go on cooldown) if you have a target selected which is not yet dead.

DARK TEMPLAR
PLEASE NOTE : You will need to recast Soul Barrier and/or Pact of Malacador after the update if you logged out with those active.

• Fixed the effect on the Dark Templar combo line Leech Life so the skull correctly appears above the head of the Dark Templar.
• The Dread Shadow pet will no longer lose life before despawning.
• The old Soul Barrier and Pact of Malacodor spells should no longer show in your spellbook, and only appear in your Abilities tab.
• When you use the Pact of Malacodor ability to remove the active buff, it will correctly go on a 5 second cooldown.
• Fixed some issues with Swapping Covenants.

DEMONOLOGIST

• Fixed an issue that made Inferno of Amher to never critically hit.

QUESTS

• Atzel's Approach
• Vaskeque will no longer offer the quest ‘Against the Larva Matrons’ and ‘Worm Holes’ to players who already have them.
• Rulvio will no longer try to offer ‘The Killing Zone’ quest to players who already have it.
• ‘The agents of Thoth-Amon are no more’ will no longer show up unless you are handing in the quest ‘The Killing Zone’.
• The quest marker over Prosco's head should now be gone when he doesn't have any more quests for you.

GENERAL

• Using the rest ability while swimming or climbing will no longer result in the ability going on cooldown.
• Fixed an issue where players could hit through Shield of the Risen, forcing your procs to hit back and the Shield to despawn.
• Ranged attacks without target should now work properly again.
• When NPCs that run after you give up and return to their spawn point, you should not be stuck in combat mode anymore.

COMBAT

• If you sheathe your weapon in the middle of performing a multi-button combo, the combo will now correctly cancel. You should no longer see yourself doing a combo with no weapons in hand.
• Weapons are now placed correctly in your hands again if you attack while sheathing your weapons.

PVP MINIGAMES

• Capture the skull: If no skulls are captured the game will now end in a tie.
• Fixed an issue with invisible objects/characters when teleporting out of a minigame.