What is coming in August? Or "hope that it's out in August"? At least I have 2 days off work this week for some extra long weekends to make it happen. All changes are more "mid-scope" changes to make them better, but for the sake of getting everything done, no changes are "massive" from a tech perspective. This doesn't mean that we'll stop with class revamps if a class/skill got touched from this change, but rather that these are the easy first steps to take.
Note that no items will be changed
Expected class balance or builds that will receive buffs change, but details of the exact buff will be revealed once it's finalized:
All Classes
All masteries: so auto-attacks do slightly more damage
Star Crumbs in forged weapons: same as above
Ranking weapons: give more damage instead of measly 10 dmg for ranking
Note: we're aware that rank revamp is highly requested, but due to the nature of their complexity, they are beyond scope of this update beyond some minor gap closing of rank vs un-ranked
Lord Knights
Spear builds: instead of chasing after damage to compete with Bowling Bash, spear skills will change to have an emphasis on accuracy
Paladins
Grand Cross builds: long awaited QoL improvements to the many strange restrictions on Grand Cross
Spear builds: give bit of small boosts for those who don't want to use Grand Cross to level and prefer auto-attacking
Sacrifice: increased scaling
Shield Chain: increased shield-related scaling so that it's worth using
High Wizard
General boost to some spells that often are overlooked
Frozen wizard: Frost Nova boosted
Professor
Storm Sage: Thunderstorm boosted
Battle Prof: reliance on soul link greatly reduced- while sage link is still helpful, you can get much higher level bolts without the link
Sniper
Bird Hunter: INT should be more relevant for blitz beat and falcon assault
High Priest
Slow Poison revamped to "Safeguard" to protect you from bleed and burning, and also allow regen under bleed and burning
Gloria lasts longer
ME Priest: ME's wave activates sooner such that it takes a shorter period of time before ME's consecutive wave hits
Champion
Combo build: allows crit so Fury does something besides being an Asura enabler; also general damage boost and sp cost reduction
Whitesmith
Ore discovery: will suck a little less
Assassin Cross
Steal: formula changed so that your stats have a greater impact on steal's success
Dual dagger: aspd is less punishing; MA now strongly encourages dual dagger and allows dagger builds to have a synergistic skill
Poison skills: generally improved to suck less, especially Venom Splasher and all of its restrictions
"Brewing sinx": will no longer be required, nor will it be a thing anymore
SBK build: scaling on both aspect improved, but especially INT portion
Sonic blow: inherently has bonuses from Sonic Acceleration now
Sonic Acceleration revamped to Critical Mastery: boost damage for critical attacks
Stalker
Backstab and Raid made more usable
Taekwon
General damage boost for all kick skills
Kick skills have an innate bonus damage if unarmed
Note: TK ranking system change is highly commonly requested; but it is beyond the scope of this change due to the complexity involved. It is definitely on our radar to definitely give some TK ranking bonus down to only require a fixed number of points.
Soul Linker
Dagger linker: base ASPD increased
Mostly quality of life or removing some arbitrary restrictions, such as Kaahi having heal interval is shortened (activates more often) or Kaite having no level limit in pvm
Star Gladiator
Bugfix: fixed issues with Miracle where Miracle lowers your damage or your exp gain if you do not have Anger of the Stars and Blessing of the Stars maxed
Hatred targets have no hp requirements; only size requirements
Many of Star Gladiator's passives given new or stronger effects
Items will not be changed in the same update, but we will keep that in mind as a follow-up update as required.
Resets will be given to everyone ONCE when this update rolls out, so everyone can reset to enjoy the new buffs to various skills.