Recently, Amazon Games Studio has provided an extensive set of PTR Patch Notes for February 24. Within these changes is an abundance of impactful balance changes in combat, bugfixes and more. Let’s dive in and discover the biggest changes coming to the PTR when it goes live.

PTR Patch Notes Combat Changes

The Combat Changes within the patch notes are very large, as a result we will do our best to provide the significant changes and information. The changes cover damage adjustments, system adjustments and more.

New Heartrune: Fire Storm

Create a tornado that damages targets in its path. You can also craft more powerful versions of the Heartgem to fit your playstyle.

Mitigation Formula

• Updated PvP Damage Mitigation formula to better scale mitigation across a variety of player’s gear scores.
• Changed Fortify and Rend to directly scale the player’s Armor Rating. Increased Fortify and Rend caps to account for these changes.

Critical Hits

Critical Hits have also received changes:

• Critical damage calculation is now additive instead of multiplicative.
• The critical hit chance pity timer no longer increases by your total critical hit chance for every non-critical hit that occurs. This is now based on the weapon’s base critical hit chance.
• Magical weapons such as the Fire Staff, Ice Gauntlet and Void Gauntlet have their base critical hit chance increased by 6%
• Bows increased by 2% base critical hit, also all other weapons has changed by 4%

PvP Enemy Persistent Spell VFX

We finally have received the visual ability to see enemy players persistent spells that differentiate from friendlies!

Equip Loads

• Changed bonuses that increased outgoing CC status effect durations on targets, to being reduced incoming CC status effect durations on self.
• Heavy equip load – Incoming Crowd Control Debuffs: -20% reduced duration
• Medium equip load – Incoming Crowd Control Debuffs: -10% reduced duration

Significant General Changes

We received a rather large list of general changes that affect the game. However we have compiled the biggest impactful changes:

• The 300 STR Attribute bonus is now on the 300 CON bonus. The tooltips changed to reflect this.
• Fixed an issue where the 200 STR and 250 DEX Attribute bonuses were not consistently applying the damage bonus while some slows were active.
• Magic weapon heavy attack buffers are now more reliable
• Fixed an issue that gives players the opportunity to jump, this prevents stagger animations from occurring. That’ll stop the bunny-hoppers!
• Added a 50% max cap for the Exhaust and Increased stamina regen rate status effects.
• Added text flyouts that will appear when a target dodges or evades your attack. This should provide better clarity on why an attack may have not hit.
• And more!

Weapon Updates

There has been sweeping changes when it comes to weapon balancing, including Crowd Control Balance, Taunt changes and more! Magic Weapons also require no mana costs to use light attacks now!

Taunts

Taunt gem compatibility now added to several abilities and weapons in the hopes it will create additional choices when tanking. This includes the following:

• Calamity Counter, 8s AOE taunt on activation
• Mighty Gavel, 4s on hit taunt
• Maelstrom, 4s on hit taunt
• Cyclone, 2s on hit taunt
• Incinerate, 3s on hit taunt
• Windchill, 3s on hit taunt
• Petrifying Scream, 4s on hit taunt
• Blast Shot, 4s on hit taunt

Crowd Control balance

Perhaps the largest changes of the PTR Patch Notes for February, all weapons received a review to make a clear differentiation between attacks that specifically mean to be for utility or Crowd Control, and attacks that mean to be purely damage related. As a result, Stagger is removed from damage focused abilities, while damage is reduced for Crowd Control abilities:

Ranged

• Bow
  • Evade Shot damage reduced from 125% to 90%.
  • Rapid Shot no longer staggers.
• Musket
  • Stopping Power damage reduced from 120% to 90%.
• Ice Gauntlet
  • Ice Spikes Mighty Spike no longer staggers.
• Void Gauntlet
  • Scream damage reduced from 100% to 70%.

Melee

• War Hammer
  • Shockwave damage reduced from 80% to 60%.
  • Wrecking Ball damage reduced from 130% to 90%.
  • Clear Out damage reduced from 115% to 100%.
  • Path of Destiny damage reduced from 100% to 70%.
• Sword and Shield
  • Shield Bash intimidating bash upgrade damage reduced from 100% to 75% weapon damage.
  • Shield Rush damage reduced from 125% to 100%.
  • Shield Rush’s Improved Rush Weaken increased from 10% to 20%.
  • Leaping Strike damage reduced from 150% to 100%.
  • Reverse Stab no longer staggers.
• Spear
  • Javelin damage reduced from 125% to 80%.
  • Perforate’s final upgrade Impactful Strikes no longer staggers and was reworked to inflict a stack of 10% weaken for 5s on each successful hit (3 stacks max).
  • Sweep’s knockdown attack damage reduced from 75% to 45%.
• Greatsword
  • Calamity Counter damage reduced from 100% to 80%.
  • Steadfast Strike’s first attack damage reduced from 70% to 40%.
  • Skyward Slash’s first attack damage reduced from 80% to 50%.
• Rapier
  • Flourish and Finish no longer staggers.
  • Flurry’s final upgrade Finalize upgrade no longer staggers and was reworked to apply a stack of the bleed used by the rest of the tree on successful hit.
• Great Axe
  • Reap’s first hit damage reduced from 70% to 60%.
  • Gravity Well’s upward Melee Swing damage reduced from 99% to 25%.
  • Gravity Well’s Vortex Burst damage reduced from 125% to 100%.
  • Insatiable Gravity Well Perk’s Burst damage reduced from 100% to 50%.
• Hatchet
  • Feral Rush’s first attack damage reduced from 115% to 80%.

Weapon Balance

Various weapons have received multiple changes, however some are mostly bugfixes:

• Blunderbuss, various bugfixes.
• Bow, Penetrating Shot, Deep Strike Upgrade, Long Range Passive, Opening Strike Passive and Finish Shot Passive all reduced damage.
• Great Axe, various bugfixes and tooltip fixes, Gravity Well is now considered a ranged attack.
• Ice gauntlet, various bugfixes, Ice Pylon has received a de-spawn option by holding the ability bind down, various tooltip fixes. Additionally a couple of passive updates were made, Cold Reach now measures how close someone is within 15m and Empowered Frost’s frosted area has increased from 3 to 6.
• Life Staff, various fixes and tweaks, the biggest change however is the Sacred Ground upgrade, Holy Ground, increased stamina regen rate has been decreased from 50% to 25%.
• Sword & Shield, various bugfixes.
• Void Gauntlet, several bugfixes and changes to several abilities such as Baleful Tether and Oblivion. Additionally there is a few other passive changes however none of which are too impactful.
• Musket, multiple bugfixes and sweeping changes in an attempt to tone down the weapon. As a result, passives have been changed that require the user to aim in for 2 seconds to receive increased accuracy.

Greatsword and Hatchet

• Hatchet, several bugfixes, however due to the power of the Hatchet, incredibly powerful tools such as Defy Death are being adjusted. Defy Death as a result of these changes now only gives invincibility for 0.5 seconds, but instead granting 500hp + 50% max health on activation. Several passives have been adjusted to need heavy attacks to activate them instead of light attacks. Finally, Berserking Refresh on the Berserk tree has been changed to give 5% life steal while Berserk is active instead of flat HP while active.
• Greatsword, a single bugfix, although many key strengths of the Greatsword have been targeted. Greatsword attack homing has been adjusted to be consistent with other melee weapons, however the quick charge bonus from the Onslaught passive is now 50% faster instead of twice as fast. Finally, some general damage reductions across the board and Relentless Rush & Skyward Slash now can be blocked.

Fire Staff Small Rework

The Fire Staff is receiving the biggest overall changes from all the weapons this patch, as a result we will dive into the details separately here!

• Pillar of Fire
  • Increased size of the AoE from 2m to 2.5m.
  • Reduced the time it took to trigger the attack from aiming from 13 frames to 7 frames (6 frame reduction)
  • Removed a 3-frame delay from the ability cast.
  • Reduced Damage from 170% to 165%.

• First Strike Upgrade, changed condition from being based on target HP, but dealing 5% damage per stack of smolder on the target. Named changed to “Strike the Match”.

Meteor Shower

• Updated ability to channel for 1s then cast the ability. Spell will remain active in the world for 4 seconds post cast.
• Increased damage of initial hit from 75% to 100% weapon damage.
• Updated status effect to tick at once per second instead of once every 0.75s.
• Increased the tick damage while inside from 25% to 50% weapon damage.
• Updated mana to all be consumed at once upon activation.

Fireball

• Updated ability to no longer leave behind the burning AOE on impact. Damage is now focused on the impact and smolder DoTs.
• Increased attack damage from 140% to 150%.

Incinerate

• Sped up start up of attack
• Increased damage of the attack from 130% to 150%.
• Added grit to the base ability

Burnout

• Set the distance increase upgrade to be the base movement distance.
• Updated the damage over time effect however that is applied by the ability to be the same smolder that the rest of the weapon uses.
• Increased damage from 129% to 130%
• Final upgrade of Burnout will trigger an explosion at the end of the ability as a result of the change.

Passive Updates

• Spell Focus – Combine functionality of Spell Focus and Flare into one passive, heavies don’t consume mana, and grant 5% mana on hit.
• Singe – Changed from just lights to light and heavy attacks.
• Flare – Updated functionality to now trigger a 1m splash on impact.
• Pyromania – Reworked, 10% damage to burning enemies.
• Heat Up – Reworked to dodging through an attack inflicts a stack of burn on the target.
• Trial by Fire – Changed activation condition from being hit, to hitting a target within 4m of player. Increased damage over time damage from 5% to 20%, Decrease duration from 10s to 5s, Decrease cooldown from 120s to 30s.
• Updated all tooltips referencing the specific “Smolder” burn to state smolder instead of burn. Burn will still apply to all general Fire DoT status effects, including smolder, but smolder is a unique burn.

Ultimate Updates

• Rune of Helios
  • Increased radius of the AOE from 2m to 4m and reduced damage bonus from 25% to 20%.
• Reheat Ultimate
  • Changed to hitting a target with a Heavy Attack that has 5 stacks of Burn will pop all burns stacks and deal 100% weapon damage in an AOE explosion around the player. (10s Cooldown)

Smolder Mechanic

Smolder is a new mechanic for the Fire Staff in the new PTR Patch Notes for February. The mechanic is simple but effective however, requiring you to stack up Smolder stacks onto your opponent and then gaining increased effects based on the stacks. For example, stacks of Smolder will increase Pillar of Fire’s damage output, additionally most abilities will now apply Smolder to help the cause.

Perk Changes

Several perks in the PTR Patch Notes for February have also been reworked to reflect the changes above. Such as the following:

• Empowering Meteor Shower
• Empowering Incinerate
• Empowering Fireball
• Fortifying Burnout (this was previously Efficient Burnout)
• Accuracy
• Mortal Empowerment, the biggest change of the perks however now only lasts 2 minutes instead of until death. Max stack size down from 15 to 10. Refresh also removed.
• Trenchant Recovery
• Refreshing Move and Refreshing Torrent
• “Bane” perks, now also deal 10% increased max damage on magic/ranged weapons
• Various others tooltip fixed or also bugfixed!

Game Mode Updates

Game Modes in New World received light changes, while also giving a small revamp to Outpost Rush:

Wars

Target Dummies can no longer be attacked during wars, this also prevents players from pre-charging their Heartrune before enemy engagements. Another great change is defenders can now also select spawn points within the Fort, this allows less predictability to re-spawns during a Fort Stage War. Finally, Tier 2 and 3 Attacker siege weapons also auto-build themselves.

• Outpost Rush, small revamp overall, but also an increased amount of individual score while capturing or contesting the forts.
• PvP Arena, a few bugfixes.
• Invasions, now provide improved rewards including things such as Umbral Shards, gear and more!

Other Notable Patch Notes

Some other notable patch notes found within the latest PTR Patch Notes for February also include a variety of small but expansive changes and fixes across categories such as:

• Progression Rewards
• Progression Gear
• Trade Skill Changes
• UX/UI/Social Changes
• General changes to sections of the game such as Companies, Trading Post, Housing and Quality of Life.
• And more!

And that covers these incredibly large but impactful PTR Patch Notes for February! These changes found above however will be available for testing on the PTR client February 24 10AM PST (6PM UTC). For full details however, visit the official post.

Also, check out the new Seasonal information, here.