Right Click Re-Examine: Sanctum of Rebirth
Good afternoon, Scapers! It has been wonderful chatting with you and seeing discussions about the upcoming Sanctum of Rebirth. As we continue to work on and refine the Right-Click Examine process, we want to update the community on the changes you've helped us finalize and unveil the upcoming set effect for the T95 dual-wield Magic weapons!
We had asked you to discuss a few topics and hop into a limited-run Beta and get hands on with three potential concepts for the upcoming T95 Dual Wield Magic drops in Sanctum of Rebirth.
Here's what we've learned from your feedback.
Corrupt Essence
The first thing we want to discuss is which of the potential set effects you'll get your hands on when the brand new T95 Magic dual-wield weapons arrives with the Sanctum of Rebirth.
Initial discussions leaned towards the third set effect, which benefited an alternative playstyle by increasing damage over time effects. This effect ramps up in power the more you stack a new debuff and adds features like refreshing cooldowns or making them hit instantly. Here is what it looked like in the beta :
- Set (1) - Damage over time abilities deal 30% more damage, affecting Combust and Corruption Blast.
- Set (2) - Damage over time abilities generate Essence Corruption with each hit:
- 1 Essence Corruption stack: Your damage over time abilities have a 30% chance to empower, dealing the damage instantly and refreshing their cooldown.
- 25 Essence Corruption stacks: Deal bonus damage against enemies (100% of stacks + 100% of your Magic level).
- 50 Essence Corruption stacks: Basic abilities generate an additional 3.6% adrenaline over 6 seconds.
- Maximum stacks: 100
During the beta the initial preference became a strong consensus, so we are going to lock in the Corrupt Essence set effect, with some tweaks.
- Swapping the first and second effects.
- Removing the charging mechanic.
- Adding a special attack which will synergize with the set effect.
- Tweaking the balance.
We'll give you a more complete look at the weapons closer to launch.
We also want to note that we are aware of players' concerns about how DoT effects currently function and this is something we have on the radar and plan to address in a future update.
With all that said, there was plenty of love for the other effects - both the excitement of the cooldown refresh and the more consistent cooldown reduction versions. While we won't be using them in this update, we do intend to keep them in mind for future reward spaces.
Two Hands or Two-Hand?
We encountered some friction between how Magic functions when using dual wield and two-handed weapons. The major two-handed magic weapon, the Fractured Staff of Armadyl, has a natural affinity for critical strikes but didn't have access to Concentrated Blast, which skewed the power balance between weapons.
Since dual-wield weapons have the stronger ability, and with a new, powerful one on the way, we were concerned that this style would dominate. Therefore, we've been looking at ways to remove some of the friction without impeding the different weapon styles.
Originally, we planned to swap around Sonic Wave and Concentrated Blast. Players were initially concerned about this negatively impacting dual wield, so instead, we unlocked the abilities to work with both styles! This went down quite well during the beta, so we'll be bringing this change to the live game alongside Sanctum of Rebirth.
Oh, and to make things interesting, we added Magna Tempest to both weapon styles as well. Spicy!
Down but not out
With the Sanctum of Rebirth, we want to try something a little new and explore an alternate death scenario in normal difficulty.
Initially, the design was to have the player not die and be sent to Death's Office but instead be knocked down for several seconds and then get back up to continue the fight. Players were very interested in this alternate scenario as it would shake things up and help players approach these fights on normal difficulty, but there was concerns about brute forcing the situation.
After further work on this system, we discovered that we could kill two birds with one stone - or rather, knock them out for a while. To enable this alternative death mechanic, we've made some tweaks to the original idea. Now, when your life points hit 0 in Normal mode, you'll resurrect and suffer from 'Resurrection Sickness', which will drastically reduce your outgoing damage for a period of time while giving you a brief damage immunity to help you get back on your feet. We'll discuss this mechanic in full closer to launch.
What happens next?
The Sanctum of Rebirth is nearly ready to devour your soul! We want to keep the launch information a little under wraps right this moment but keep an eye on our social channels for more information coming soon!