Priest / Martyr Merge + Channel Changes

Priest / Martyr Subclass Merge:

The Martyr and Priest classes have been merged with the subclass skills of the two combined into Priest. If you were a Martyr before this reboot then you should have received a note explaining the change. If you were a Priest before the reboot then you gained:

Humility, Sacrifice life, Heavenly Smiting, Serenity

Be sure to read the helps on these and if you just got these skills for the first time you will need to practice them. If you were a Martyr then any percent practiced in these should have carried over.

Holy Preference / Unholy Preference – New Priest / Harmer Ability:

There is a new Priest ability called ‘Holy Preference‘. More information is in the helpfile but the short version is that this a passive ability that causes Protection from Good to be ignored on the target, unless the target is also a Priest (and some mobs can be priests).

There is a new corresponding Harmer ability called ‘Unholy Preference‘ that causes Protection from Evil to be ignored on the target. Again, more details in the helpfile but this does *not* stack with Desecration. I realize that for max-stat Harmers this does nothing at all as you can have Desecration up 100% of the time, but it will help at other levels and stat ranges.

Channel Changes:

There is a new feature to allow you to turn off a channel for a set number of minutes rather than permanently. This only works on regular channels, not channels tied to a specific feature such as auction. As an example, to turn off gossip for 10 minutes use:

 gossip *off 10

If the channel is already off then you are basically setting a timer to turn it back on in 10 minutes. The timeout shows in the ‘channels’ command and if you manually turn on the channel in the meantime then any timeout on the channel will be cancelled.

Gossip channel is relatively quiet these days and with this new feature in place to turn off the occasional temporary “explosion” on the channel, we would like to encourage more discussion on gossip rather than sidebar channels. Between that and clearing up a couple of channels we just no longer need, the following channels have been removed:

Debate, Mxit, Sports, quote, Gsocial, Nobletalk, Advice and Gametalk

Obviously we’re not going to tell people to move conversations to channels that don’t exist so this can be considered a loosening of the the channel rules in terms of where conversations take place. It does *not* change any of the rules about excessive trolling and spamming.

These channels have also been removed from ‘gamestat 12’ and from colorset options.

Other Changes in this Reboot:

• The amount by which align impacts Paladin damage has been increased. This means that extreme align Paladins will do more damage with spells (approx 25%) then before the change. Paladins closer to neutral will do slightly less damage than before. I have seen suggestions to remove this alignment bonus / penalty completely but would rather keep it and make it more worthwhile.
• The Blazing Fury spell has been added to the list of spells that cannot be used on clan items (staves, scrolls, etc). This was an earlier oversight as the other higher level paladin attack spells were already on the list. No impact to existing items in the game.
• The ‘Desecration’ and ‘Party Sanctuary’ spells can now be cast while in combat.
• Made ‘Curse of Sloth’ duration more based on stats and greatly reduced the recovery timer (Kane). Made the same changes to the ‘Flank’ skill.
• When using Hammerswing, the hammer will start to slow down after the first 3 opponents in the room and do less damage to subsequent targets Overall damage over time (number of rounds) does still increase regardless of number of opponents.
• The ‘Sacrifice Life’ spell will now show the actual amount healed. (Daresia)
• The base percentage on Precision (soldier skill to ignore dodges) has been increased, particularly in PVP.
• The ‘pkoff’ setting will now be set by default for new users. This is the one that prevents you from attacking another player via area attacks etc. (StarsOcar / Arcidayne)
• Someone who is hardcore should now be able to attack OPK players but with the usual level checks in place. Someone who is OPK should be able to attack hardcore without level checks in place same as everyone else. (XiQuan)
• When you Superhero you will now get a full restore. Not a big deal but with sometimes large amounts of HP being restored from saved stats this will allow a new superhero to enjoy their own double without having to spend 5 minutes healing. (DjVoltron / Soleila)