Upcoming combat changes in Publish 103

cobb

what is your motivation for wanting to nerf the underpowered dexer?

CovenantX

cobb said:

not sure what you mean by what would parry be doing... Lot of ppl take parry so they don't get wiped out quickly during group fights



But according to you parry isn't even needed to kill a dexer 1v1 ever, because that's just how stronger mages are. 

Even if you take parry out of the equation, the mage is still stronger, but your solution is to nerf the dexer anyway?

  When everyone has parry, dexers don't even play UO.   

 

 I know people have parry so they don't get wiped out quickly during "Group" fights.  because it's not balanced around one vs one...   this is why dexers can barely play UO, because everyone is hard to hit.  the only counter against parry?  play a mage. they can't be parried.

  Then you have evasion, at least there's a cooldown, and you know when it's active. the counter to that? don't be an idiot and waste mana on someone that just used evasion.

 Besides, if they drop parry chances by 10-15%, evasion would lose a % of that anyway.

CovenantX

cobb said:

what is your motivation for wanting to nerf the underpowered dexer?

 It's not about nerfing the dexers. it's about nerfing the things that are better than dexers.

 I understand nerfing splintering will hurt dexers a little bit, the problem here is that Dexers shouldn't have to depend on a "Hit spell" for them to be useful.   dexers still need to be buffed a little some other way.   and I mean melee only, Archers & Throwers are still somewhat viable (mostly because of ranged dismount...)   if parry is toned down they'd be playable solo again too.  atleast in a more fair environment than it is now.

highly depends on what happens with Parry.

cobb

The_Higgs_1 said:

Any other nerf is just going to lead to mages being better off with splintering weapons then melee. 

The proposed change is already better for mages.

Lets take a look at the bushido parry mage. They are widely considered as being one of the best builds out there currently. This is the build that should have been nerfed in this publish. Many of them don't even use splintering, because nerve strike is very effective as is especially with spell combos. Their offense is not affected at all.

As I have mentioned before other mages can adapt by dropping their weapon skill and Tactics.  They can use a mage weapon with splintering.  Since splintering won't be proc on specials, it would be better just to proc splintering with base hits. and you do not need weapon skill or tactics for that. So they get to save about 200 skill points which they will spend to make their character overpowered in other ways.

Yeah pretty much this publish is going to make mages stronger overall since their competitors are getting trashed

cobb

CovenantX said:

 

 I understand nerfing splintering will hurt dexers a little bit, the problem here is that Dexers shouldn't have to depend on a "Hit spell" for them to be useful.  

That is the biggest understatement I have other heard. This is going to completely cripple them. So to help the dexer who has no chance in a 1v1, you are going to take splintering away from them?

You want to buff dexers? why not let focused spec dexers (ones with less than 70 magery) proc splintering with specials then?

cobb

if the proposed change is going make a weak build even weaker, then obviously it is not the correct solution to the problem.

cobb

Check out this quote from another thread.

Seems the biggest problem melee has is killing ppl who run and heal.  Splintering is the most obvious solution to that, but you want to take that away?!!?!

cobb

Some ppl are claiming mages with Splintering weapons are overpowered (which I don't necessarily agree with). But for arguments sake lets say I agree.

Then shouldn't you nerf mages only? You can do this by not allowing Splintering with specials if you have less than 70 magery.

Why is the melee dexer even getting touched at all? There is absolutely no reason for that. It should not be happening.

The_Higgs_1

People are always gonna run regardless of what happens in UO.  Unless there is a way to not make splintering proc on mages/archers period, splintering will never be better for a dexxer.  Also remember that this is a discussion about proposed changes they are not set in stone, so don't get all nutty over it.   They would need to buff AI to like 40 dmg for melee only or something like that in order for melee to get better.  Otherwise people are going to just play disarm archers again cause its much better then pure melee.  None of whats happening so far is jump dexxers up cept for the parry change, range will always trump one tile, unless one tile gets specific upgrades.  they would hve to create some sort of focus spec for one tile templates.  But you cant base anything off running cause everyone runs no matter what template anyone uses.

cobb

you're right. If splinter gets nerfed, most melee toons will become archers. Without splintering, an archer is superior to a pure melee in every way possible. good way to kill melee and diversity.

CovenantX

@Bleak ; said on TC1 yesterday "We're only discussing changes in the patch notes" 

Buffing dexers wasn't on the table.    Parry, Splintering, & Discord were basically all of it.

Bleak also seemed to be afk for most of the discussion, we could only hope he was taking notes.

We'll just have to wait to see what the next round of updates look like. 

cobb

The_Higgs_1 said:

Unless there is a way to not make splintering proc on mages/archers period, splintering will never be better for a dexxer.  

Disable Splinter with specials only if you have Magery. Problem solved

ezikel

cobb said:

The_Higgs_1 said:

Unless there is a way to not make splintering proc on mages/archers period, splintering will never be better for a dexxer.  

Disable Splinter with specials only if you have Magery. Problem solved

why magery and splintering its not op. they only need to add a timer immunity and make healing heal and remove the bleed from the splinter

maybe drop parry chance for 5%,

Mervyn

Too many people saying too many different things, what a mess. 

KoD

I think splintering should NOT be changed at all. The only OP issue was the disarm splinters and they have been solved long ago.

The game is well balanced, only the pies were a little bit of an issue. 

I think the devs should focus of creating diversity, if you keep nerfing all the toons you will have more and more people quitting the pvp here.

removing splintering specials makes no sense, melee dexers will not be able to kill anyone unless the opponent client crash.

I see many comments of people who barely pvp, I have no words honestly.

Tail

KoD said:

I think splintering should NOT be changed at all. The only OP issue was the disarm splinters and they have been solved long ago.

The above statement is clearly biased. The poster claims that Splintering is NOT OP? Are you kidding me? Splintering weapon; Bleeds, Force Walks, Initial Damage, is spammable, and costs 0 Mana. 

Lets compare that with Hit lighting shall we? How many things does Hit lighting do? (The answer is (2) it goes off while dealing damage and deals damage). You can have your own opinions but you cant have your own facts. If something is OP or  isn't, is NOT an opinion, it's something that can be demonstrated to be true.

Lastly, are you going to say that Splintering/Lethal Poison in 1 hit isn't OP? I will assume you simply haven't thought about what all Splintering does.

KoD

I pvp since 21 years on this game... disarm splinter was annoying. Nothing else is. The problem is that nowadays it’s necessary to have parrying to pvp in group fights.

melee dexers without splintering will be totally useless and even with splinter they need tons of minutes to put themselves in condition to win a 1vs1, and most of them fail and die trying vs a proper mage.

I could post many videos of how a melee dexer already now struggles to pvp in nowadays scenarios, remove splintering and we will be all forced to play a mage with parry bushido to pvp

The_Higgs_1

Splintering is not melee only and cannot be argued that way.  Literally everyone on any template takes advantage of the power of splinter.  Regardless of whether they decide to add a immunity timer per target, at minimum it needs to not proc with dp disarm and dismount.   If it were up to me Id just remove it from the game or make it irrelevant by adding like 50 mana cost to or something.  If melee wants to get better then they need to make melee only changes, like a focus spec setup.  If its not done that way anything that's given to melee will just end up being used my mages and archers and melee falls further behind again.   But like I said above with a proper nerf to parry melee will get a boost anyway.

P.S. One of the biggest reasons everyone picked up parry is due to how OP splintering is, its a game-wrecker in pvp like Von Miller.

EM Sarah

Once again someone says something not correct.

Everyone took up parrying because of how the fights are going on nowadays.

Groups of mages holding a high end spell and dropping it on a target, if you don't have parry + bushido , you insta die after you get cursed.

Or if they don't kill you like this and you get dismounted , it's pretty much over if you don't have ninjitsu.

Splinter was already removed with disarm and that was the only and biggest issue about splintering.

If you want to remove splinter from something, it could be magery+splintering or splintering and poisoning for example...but not for sure anything else. 

Once again we should improve the dci for the template who have 0 parry. If we do as you say...and we nerf parrying, the group fights will last 5 seconds, everyone will quit. Bravo.

Optimus

Splintering is a powerful mod, but it is available to everybody, and is commonplace in PvP, integral even, at this point. Not just to dexers, many mage templates are reliant on it to get kills as well, as all anybody with a brain and broadband connection needs to do is boogy off when at half life and confidence//evasion/heal/chug/eater/regen/sw buff kite, and aside from some critical failure on the runner's part, he will always live to run back and give it another go.

With all the defense/survival buffs and tools available, there needs to be an equalizer to swing the other way, and splinter has done a pretty good job of it. Along with landing a nice bok bok for 80+ damage on a bushido mage, or getting a mystic shield bash combo off, splintering is one of the few tools mages have to stop people from running away and/or finishing them off in a 1on1 situation.

As for the poor dexer, getting rid of splinter is going to hamstring them. They might still have some use in group PvP for foots and heal blocking, but a bok mage can do all those things anyways, and forget about a 1 tiler excelling solo. Things have changed, and the level of survivability is higher than ever, as such, without certain things that some consider OP, people aren't going to get kills, not by themselves at least. You can't sit there and outcast somebody to death anymore, not anybody with any reasonable level of skill or sense of self-preservation anyways. The game has evolved, and some players haven't, they are struggling, not realizing it isn't 2013 anymore.

I will also mention again, that ripping splintering out as mentioned in Bleak's post, will make hundreds [or thousands in some cases] of dollars worth of the average player's templates and gear useless, and devalue it accordingly. Wanna see people walk away from something? Pretty sure that'll do it. Make something not just beneficial, but necessary to be competitive in a game for years, with players paying hundreds of real world dollars [or the equivalent] for items in this wizard game, then one day cancel it, rendering items useless, and of no value. Well, then just wait, people will stop logging in and we won't have to anybody to discuss this anymore.

Add an immunity timer, which is a moderate nerf, see how that goes, rather than essentially taking it out of PvP for anybody without ninjitsu. Proceeding to destroy a huge offensive aspect of PvP is just going to limit viable template options.

Cookie

It's interesting how many of you class bushido parry weapon users with 80+ dexterity as an issue, But don't comprehend the problem.

These abominations are Dexxers.

If these things are mages, stop them from using weapons - don't adjust all the other dexxer skills.

You see, you can't have it all ways, you can't have your cake and eat it without the huge balance issues you have now.

You give dexxers too much mana, you give mages too much dex (and a weapon) you make the whole thing unbalanced and blur all the class templates lines. Everything becomes the same. To me, you all have an issue with dexxers here, not mages.

I don't count those things in the same class or league as myself.

ps. My full analysis of the 4 proposed changes is in the pvp thread, I'm ok with them mainly. Not sure they will fully solve things, but worth a try.

pps. I half agree with EM Sarah's post, especially the +DCI bit for non parry users.

ppps. Optimus - it's players buying pvp suits like this that are causing the problem. They fully deserve to be hit for such bad sportsmanlike attitude and treating pvp in such a way. Because of them, 100's are driven from pvp. All of this debate, is because of them, pushing game itemisation to its limits. (Admittedly the itemisation has been done terribly in the first place). I'm ok with your immunity timer idea bit though on splintering.


Another thought of mine, I do get that it is hard for 1 tile warriors these days.
In the same way that maybe pure (non parry) mages could be buffed with extra dci, maybe pure warriors could be buffed with 2 tile hits... To me, a ton of these issues have been caused by giving all classes everything, and completely ignoring the natural pure class balance checks that used to exist in the first place. Buff the pure classes again, make them more attractive.

Tail

Why do I keep seeing post after post of people complaining that dexxers have it hard and in the same sentence says parry don't need nurfed. WTF? Parry IS the reason Dexxers have it hard...lol. Splintering is way OP, at least take off 1 things that it does. Get rid of bleed or forcewalk.

KoD

Optimus said:

Splintering is a powerful mod, but it is available to everybody, and is commonplace in PvP, integral even, at this point. Not just to dexers, many mage templates are reliant on it to get kills as well, as all anybody with a brain and broadband connection needs to do is boogy off when at half life and confidence//evasion/heal/chug/eater/regen/sw buff kite, and aside from some critical failure on the runner's part, he will always live to run back and give it another go.

With all the defense/survival buffs and tools available, there needs to be an equalizer to swing the other way, and splinter has done a pretty good job of it. Along with landing a nice bok bok for 80+ damage on a bushido mage, or getting a mystic shield bash combo off, splintering is one of the few tools mages have to stop people from running away and/or finishing them off in a 1on1 situation.

As for the poor dexer, getting rid of splinter is going to hamstring them. They might still have some use in group PvP for foots and heal blocking, but a bok mage can do all those things anyways, and forget about a 1 tiler excelling solo. Things have changed, and the level of survivability is higher than ever, as such, without certain things that some consider OP, people aren't going to get kills, not by themselves at least. You can't sit there and outcast somebody to death anymore, not anybody with any reasonable level of skill or sense of self-preservation anyways. The game has evolved, and some players haven't, they are struggling, not realizing it isn't 2013 anymore.

I will also mention again, that ripping splintering out as mentioned in Bleak's post, will make hundreds [or thousands in some cases] of dollars worth of the average player's templates and gear useless, and devalue it accordingly. Wanna see people walk away from something? Pretty sure that'll do it. Make something not just beneficial, but necessary to be competitive in a game for years, with players paying hundreds of real world dollars [or the equivalent] for items in this wizard game, then one day cancel it, rendering items useless, and of no value. Well, then just wait, people will stop logging in and we won't have to anybody to discuss this anymore.

Add an immunity timer, which is a moderate nerf, see how that goes, rather than essentially taking it out of PvP for anybody without ninjitsu. Proceeding to destroy a huge offensive aspect of PvP is just going to limit viable template options.

I totally agree

KoD

Last time I played my one tiler it took me 10 minutes to kill one mage 1vs1... and he was on foot for like 6 minutes but with parry, I always missed and he had no ninja. Without splintering it will be pointless to 1vs1. Everyone will be with 120 ninja and focus attack to hit with a 60% splinter weapon and no specials.

instead of adding more templates to play, literally the 90% will have 120 ninjitsu to focus attack....

KoD

Tail said:

Why do I keep seeing post after post of people complaining that dexxers have it hard and in the same sentence says parry don't need nurfed. WTF? Parry IS the reason Dexxers have it hard...lol. Splintering is way OP, at least take off 1 things that it does. Get rid of bleed or forcewalk.

The problem is that without parry , group fights will be over at once, the pvp will die. 

The dmg output of a group nowadays with all the new targetting techniques have made the group fights relying on the possibility to evade a sync that causes 200 hp dmg in one second. If you are fast you cast evade, go to like 10-20% life and move out to heal and come back to fight.

the pvp is very well balanced. Nerfing things now will create a mess. 

Tail

-KoD said:

Last time I played my one tiler it took me 10 minutes to kill one mage 1vs1... and he was on foot for like 6 minutes but with parry, I always missed and he had no ninja. Without splintering it will be pointless to 1vs1. Everyone will be with 120 ninja and focus attack to hit with a 60% splinter weapon and no specials.

instead of adding more templates to play, literally the 90% will have 120 ninjitsu to focus attack....

I just can't believe what I am reading. You CANNOT sit here and say it took you 6 minutes to kill a guy with parry on foot, claim you always missed and still say, "the pvp is very well balanced. Nerfing things now will create a mess." Google 'the law of non-contradiction.'  

KoD said:

The problem is that without parry , group fights will be over at once, the pvp will die. 

This is not based on facts. However, no one is suggesting to rid the uo world of parry..so why would you even say that? Do you realize that Splintering wasn't in UO for most of it's life..and was more populated then? Splintering weapon is very very very OP . .you can know this because when EVERYONE is doing the same thing there is a reason. Since practically everyone has parry and splintering this tells us they are op. The only reason you are defending it is because clearly you use it. Perhaps you cannot pvp without it. Regardless, I am looking out for the game as a whole. Not trying to to save a template I built. 

Also, if you get ganked by 2 or more people...you are supposed to die at least 7 out of 10 times (depending on your template). This is how it is in every game on the market. A gank  is a gank. Group play would then reflect the group with the better plays winning more often. Simple as that.

Cetric

players without parry get absolutely slaughtered.  And I might be under-exaggerating that.  Perhaps if you do not have parry you should get a DCI cap boost to 50 while reducing parry 5% across the board as well.  TBH its so bad without parry you almost question if the hit chance formula is broken.

Though its hard to say if being hit by multiple splinters is the reason for part of it, its also true archers can do some work without parry due to range.  Being that I would propose:

-10-15 second immunity to splinter.  splinter effect lasts what, 5-6 seconds? Having as much potential downtime as up time seems fair.

-remove bleed effect from splinter, make it force walk, make it have bleeding graphic, but bleed damage ticks and disruptions go away.  The near necessity to splinter is the force walk aspect of it, and you could argue it is a great feature alone.  Adding a free special move to it is unnecessary.

-Splinter no longer proc on specials Disarm (already doesn't), Dismount, Infectious Strike, Injecting Strike (from mastery) IF bleed ticks remain though removing bleed ticks would be more preferable.  If bleed ticks are removed, adding dismount to the list of disarm is sufficient alone.  Free bleed special move, forced to walk, with bleed ticks disrupting spells, as well as lethal poison damage ticks disrupting spells, all while lethal poison is hard to cure with potions has been a death sentence for a while now.  You can fail many cure potions, while also having trouble casting Arch Cure to even remove it, while also being walked.  All of this together is too much.

-Splinter no longer proc not only on Disarm and Dismount special moves, but also not while under the effects of them.  IE.  if you are on disarm timer, you cannot be force walked via splinter.  If you are on dismounted and cannot mount timer, you cannot be force walked via splinter.  So if you are splintered, then get disarmed, the effect goes away, and cannot be splintered post disarm either.  Both of these special moves are plenty powerful in their own right.

-Reduce parry chance 5% across the board - 15% at 60, 25% at GM, 30% at 120, 35% at 120 with 2 handed non balanced weapon with 120 Bushido. 

-Raise DCI cap to 50-55 if you do not have parry, 45 if you do, alterable with refinements.  Perhaps even grant a 5 DCI free (so 5/50 dci while naked) for not having parry.  This would help cull the slaughter of not having parry, and perhaps make it not feel quite so necessary.

-BYE BYE FIRE PIES

Other thoughts not included in original notes:

-Allow more player damage to get through evasion, as that seems to be the only solution to slightly nerfing evasion without effecting PvM.  No one knows the exact evasion formula to give recommendations AND/OR Raise the usage timer from 20 to 30 seconds.

-Cap the amount of potions a shatter pot can remove at 15-25.

-Make Cleansing Winds disrupt-able regardless of being in protection or not. 

-Give remove curse from Chivalry a longer cast time.  It is too fast and has always been too fast.

-Buff Wrestle Mastery for non-parry players

-Introduce a Focus Spec for Warriors similar to the Focus Spec for casters.  If a player does not have high skill in Magery, Mysticism, Necro, Chivalry or Spellweaving provide a base damage boost to all weapons.

ezikel

Cetric said:

players without parry get absolutely slaughtered.  And I might be under-exaggerating that.  Perhaps if you do not have parry you should get a DCI cap boost to 50 while reducing parry 5% across the board as well.  TBH its so bad without parry you almost question if the hit chance formula is broken.

Though its hard to say if being hit by multiple splinters is the reason for part of it, its also true archers can do some work without parry due to range.  Being that I would propose:

-10-15 second immunity to splinter.  splinter effect lasts what, 5-6 seconds? Having as much potential downtime as up time seems fair.

-remove bleed effect from splinter, make it force walk, make it have bleeding graphic, but bleed damage ticks and disruptions go away.  The near necessity to splinter is the force walk aspect of it, and you could argue it is a great feature alone.  Adding a free special move to it is unnecessary.

-Splinter no longer proc on specials Disarm (already doesn't), Dismount, Infectious Strike, Injecting Strike (from mastery) IF bleed ticks remain though removing bleed ticks would be more preferable.  If bleed ticks are removed, adding dismount to the list of disarm is sufficient alone.  Free bleed special move, forced to walk, with bleed ticks disrupting spells, as well as lethal poison damage ticks disrupting spells, all while lethal poison is hard to cure with potions has been a death sentence for a while now.  You can fail many cure potions, while also having trouble casting Arch Cure to even remove it, while also being walked.  All of this together is too much.

-Splinter no longer proc not only on Disarm and Dismount special moves, but also not while under the effects of them.  IE.  if you are on disarm timer, you cannot be force walked via splinter.  If you are on dismounted and cannot mount timer, you cannot be force walked via splinter.  So if you are splintered, then get disarmed, the effect goes away, and cannot be splintered post disarm either.  Both of these special moves are plenty powerful in their own right.

-Reduce parry chance 5% across the board - 15% at 60, 25% at GM, 30% at 120, 35% at 120 with 2 handed non balanced weapon with 120 Bushido. 

-Raise DCI cap to 50-55 if you do not have parry, 45 if you do, alterable with refinements.  Perhaps even grant a 5 DCI free (so 5/50 dci while naked) for not having parry.  This would help cull the slaughter of not having parry, and perhaps make it not feel quite so necessary.

-BYE BYE FIRE PIES

Other thoughts not included in original notes:

-Allow more player damage to get through evasion, as that seems to be the only solution to slightly nerfing evasion without effecting PvM.  No one knows the exact evasion formula to give recommendations AND/OR Raise the usage timer from 20 to 30 seconds.

-Cap the amount of potions a shatter pot can remove at 15-25.

-Make Cleansing Winds disrupt-able regardless of being in protection or not. 

-Give remove curse from Chivalry a longer cast time.  It is too fast and has always been too fast.

-Buff Wrestle Mastery for non-parry players

-Introduce a Focus Spec for Warriors similar to the Focus Spec for casters.  If a player does not have high skill in Magery, Mysticism, Necro, Chivalry or Spellweaving provide a base damage boost to all weapons.

I like your idea to put a balance between dexxer, parry and without parry. without removing the benefit of converting into 120 skill.but splitering ,I think you push the nerf too far.a timer to not be spammed with splintering and to allow healing to remove bleed and heal. a mage, a paladin or with bushido you can always go back your life but with healing your dead most of the time.remove the splintering boost with focus attack no more 60%.

i like most of your point focus spec for warriors can be nice.

but I would add to have a gameplay vary and fun
-revert the super nova delay (zero reasons to take alchy now) and add a alchemy mastery that allows you to double conflag at gm alchy.

-keep the pie but add longuer timer between use and reduce the time of the effect
-Heavily nerfed shatter pots
- Raise pet base damage .you ave to be on foot and vulnerable for fight .but you damage output are complet useless .
-split damage of nether cyclone between targets

but i can dream about all this

KoD

Cetric + 5 dciis nothing with 0 parry. 

Without parrying is not possible to pvp nowadays vs players who know what they are doing.

Nerfing splinter again is a bad idea. Dismounts you say cetric? It’s already super hard to dismount with a no dachi on a one tiler... give the little bonus of a splinter ( and you must be lucky with the rng). I don’t think it has ever been an issue since on 10 no dachi dmounts you are maybe lucky to get a couple of splinters. 

I think as you said the wrestling mastery should be fixed if you have 0 parry, it should do something good.

I would say to introduce a mastery for alchemy too and inscription.

bring back mages with spellbooks and 0 parry ofc. The pvp is well balanced now, it’s hard to kill people nowadays even!!

I would post the videos of your guild making the syncs just to prove my point, since too many are not really pvpers here

The_Higgs_1

First of all if 5+ mages sync on you correctly, you should die.  Right now everything is setup for too much survivablitliy because no one wants to die and plays overly defensive.  That is not pvp and is awful for the future of pvp.  Ive watched a bunch of fights between the three zerg guilds of atl and it goes the same everytime. One team attempts a sync, their target evades, everyone then runs around for another 2-5 minutes then tries again. Then if one person dies on either side the rest leave until their buddy is out of stat.  So in 10-15 minutes of so called pvp, they only actually fight for like 30 secs to a minute.  How can you say that is fun or not broken?!?!?!  

I would prefer the parry fix be related to casting schools only but across the board is better then nothing.  Maybe we need to go back to 15 SDI for non focus spec and 25 for focus spec, since parry is on the non focus spec list.  

Splintering has to be nerfed no matter what, I think immunity timer along with no special proc is good enough, but they also need to make it not work focus attack, lightning strike, deathstrike as well.   

These so called "targeting techniques" are illegal outside programs so just get rid of those cheats, everyone wants easy button pvp with stuff like that.  There is no skill and strategy to pvp anymore, bring it back to pvp.

I would create a list of focus spec 1-tile dexxer list (healing, anatomy, weapon skill, tactics, bushido, ninjitsu) and then give bonuses to that setup like 40 dmg AI, slight increase in base damage on weps.  

Refinements also added to the survivability with basically no trade off, they get 15 exra lmc and lose 5 dci to get 75 fire resist.  I propose they make where if you increase resistance then you lose the lmc bonus on that item and stay non medable,  that's an actual trade off.  

Chivalry just needs bushido added to the 4/6 break list.  And maybe slightly longer cast time on remove curse.  

As far as all these consumables go, its got completely out of hand.  Nothing should take place of skill based damage in this game.  Novas are dumb and do too much damage for free, regardless of alchemy skill.  Fire pies are gone, why not do the same for stuff like trance potion and mana potion, its just not needed in pvp.  leave that stuff for pvm content where boss fights last longer.