Update 0.98.0 - Endgame difficulty rebalance, tweaks, fixes, new stats

Hey everyone!

This update should take care of the issues with indirect damage suddenly being extremely lethal, as it was balanced when a bug that was fixed in the previous update was active. I also added two new stats and enchants to specifically let you deal with indirect damage if you find your preferred form of defenses lacking in that area. While I was doing that I figured I'd take a poke at the endless tier scaling, as it rapidly got a bit out of hand, and - as always - I got a bit carried away and made a larger update than intended. I've also fixed a couple issues that popped up, gave Warden some tweaks, and poked at a few other things here and there.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this update!

Now I'm off to dig myself deep into Act 5 work :-)

Here's the full notes:

0.98.0:

Difficulty & Mechanics:

• Rebalanced all indirect damage and DoT damage from enemies, and gave it an upper cap - indirect damage can no longer deal more than 5% of your health in damage per strike/tick. Best way to combat indirect damage is by your preferred method of sustain (hoh, hpr, healing skill/codex, etc) rather than beefing up your health pool. (And using the new stats, of course!)

• Tweaked enemy damage bonus curve through endgame difficulties - once you get high enough (endless T42 and forwards) the curve flattens and becomes liniear, so you can shift focus to doing more damage instead of avoiding pesky one-shots.

• Similarly, enemy health bonus flattens on T100, and starts to slowly pick up again as you progress further.

• Increased bonus experience per endless tier reached.

• Enemy "on hit" affixes are now calculated as the final step in damage calculation, meaning after shields and such has been considered.

• Suffering Thorns damage now has an internal cooldown of 20 frames so you don't nuke yourself on Thorn packs.

• Thorns still punch through shields (as intended).

• Trap damage now scales with difficulty (oops).

Skills:

All:

- Lightfooted (Perk) now also affects companions.

Warden:

- Companion passives buffed:

    - Moon Howl (Wolves) damage boost increased to 11/18/25%, up from 9/12/15%

    - Empowerment (Pixies) damage boost increased to 10/15/20%, up from 6/8/10%

    - Antivenom (Spiders) resistance boost increased to 20/30/40%, up from 15/20/25%

    - Thorny (Treants) thorn bonus increased to 30/50/70%, up from 9/12/15%

    - Oak Wisdom (Treants) mana bonus increased to 10/20/30%, up from 12/15/18%

Stats & Enchants:

• Added two new defensive stats: Ground Effect Resistance, and Indirect Damage Resistance.

• Added enchants for the new stats: Ground Effect Resistance can be found on Boots and Accessories. Indirect Damage Resistance can be found on Helmets and Amulets. Both are considered Minor enchants.

Interface:

• Improved stat panel on the interface by dividing stats into more clear groups.

• Help index updated with new stats.

Fixes:

• Fixed issue with skill resets causing blank allocated skills.

• Fixed characters playing powerful skill shouts/grunts on default attacks (when not having any skill assigned in leftmost slot).

• Fixed issue where Act 4 Troves achievement would trigger before the last one was found.

• Fixed crash when Trogs smashed urns.

• Fixed Codex adding everything in your stash to the counters on each game start.

Locale:

• Updated stats locale and enchants locale with the new stats & enchants.