After our explanation of why gems are an issue in Age of Conan, the next thing to look for was a nerf, and probably quite a big one. It was with very little surprise, then, that we took a look at the notes for the latest patch to go to Testlive this morning and saw this lurking among them: 'Reduced the bonuses granted by all Invulnerability, Evade, Fatality, Offhand Chance, and Damage gems by a significant amount.'Just how significant is 'significant'? Poster Threeze from the AoC forums has kindly put together a reference chart. As you can see, that is some epic nerfing. +8.9% one-handed damage down to +0.5% one-handed damage? The coders at Funcom are not messing about here. While bearing in mind that this is only a Testlive patch and isn't guaranteed to go live, it would solve the issue of extreme gem-powered damage in PvP. And judging by the rest of the patch notes, addressing PvP is a major priority.
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Funcom clearly want PvP to involve less one-shotting and more drawn-out battles: 'PvP damage has been further tweaked to do less DPS than the damage done in PvE.' The notoriety system sees additional modifications, too. Some changes are in that encourage PvPers to pick on targets their own size: 'PvP XP is now only given if the opponent player is above gray con to you ( ie. no more than 7 levels below you or higher, and cons a color to you)' and 'Murderpoints are now given if the player you kill is more than 7 levels below you. (ie. that player cons gray to you).' The latter change is something the players themselves were demanding, feeling the original limit too restrictive.
The gem nerf is drastic, but as with any major change that has a balancing impact on PvP, it seems to have pleased some people while infuriating others. That said, judging by the forum response, it's not the approach that a lot of players would have liked to see. Given that stacking gems of similar type was the root of the problem, many players had independently suggested a system whereby a player could benefit from only one gem of a particular type per item (or possibly even per character), allowing gems to keep their potency but preventing excessive stacking. We liked the sound of this rather better than the current sound of gems crunching under the steamroller.
In any case, we think these changes are clear signs that the big PvP patch is nearly ready to roll. The gem issue was seen as a stumbling block, and now that it's pulverized, we'll be watching keenly to see what comes next.
