Sanya has been posting after I take off for the weekend that is why you don't get your Grab Bag until Monday, sorry all! Here it is, get comfortable: Q: Please talk about the patch 1.50 changes to left axe, and specifically the doublefrost style. A: Here’s everything I have found out in the last week. To refresh everyone’s memory, the patch note said the following: “- All Left Axe styles which grow in damage as you train further in left axe have the amount they grow doubled. This is to balance out the fact that left axe damage is cut in half (because two weapons hit every round).” The reason this change was made was simple – left axe styles, because both weapons hit every round, do half the damage that a regular style does. Therefore, their base damage figure is double that of an ordinary style. The growth rate of left axe styles should also be double that of an ordinary style. Left axe users were noticing diminishing returns as they leveled up – because we had the growth rate set wrong. So, the purpose of this patch was to fix that problem. Putting more spec into left axe through either skill points, realm points, or item bonuses, should now result in the kind of damage more in keeping with a higher spec. A separate issue, and one not named in the patch notes - doublefrost was set incorrectly. There are three kinds of damage formulas for styles – “use anytime” styles have the lowest base damage, styles that require an opening move have a medium base damage, and “end of chain” styles have the highest base damage. DF had a medium base damage, when it should have had the lowest version. This was not a big deal… until we fixed the growth rate. With the growth rate being wrong, DF was a great style. With the correct growth rate scaling up your damage as you spec, DF would have been INSANE. So, the base damage of DF was modified so that it would show growth at the high levels as all the other styles now do, but not such outrageous growth as to need destruction. The reduction should not have been noticeable, and in fact players at higher levels (both in character and left axe) should be seeing a small improvement. Worst case scenario: If you have left axe specced ONLY to 34, if you have no realm ranks, and if you have no bonus items, you will have the maximum possible reduction – approximately a 3% reduction. This was the result of our tests, and the result of tests conducted with actual player characters. Each set of tests was conducted with the same character, wearing the same equipment, fighting the same opponent, forty five minutes of fighting for each test, with the only difference being the code – old code and new code. Short version – you shouldn’t be seeing much of a difference in doublefrost, but you should have an improvement in all other styles, one that becomes more apparent the higher your spec level goes. I do welcome logs, as always. I am especially interested in logs (parsed if possible, but I’ll slog through them no matter what) that compare and contrast RVR damage against similar opponents both pre-1.50 and post-1.50. Please note all your vital stats in your email, so we can make a version of you on our internal server if we have to. Q: Does my skill in my right hand weapon affect the damage I do with my offhand weapon, as a left axe user? What about when I use my styles, does my main weapon skill affect style damage in any way? A: Your style damage is purely bonus damage, and the base damage formula for that only takes into account your skill in left axe (well, along with the weapon’s damage, of course). Your regular non-style damage DOES take into account your weapon spec when calculating the base damage for either hand. Q: What happened to OfCamelot.com? Where’d they go? A: The world is full of jerks, and OfCamelot was the victim of several such jerks – specifically, their host company and a speculator in web addresses. The hosting company expired the domain name and instantly put it up for grabs, with no warning to our favorite site hosts, and a web domain broker snatched it up. Fansites do not as a general rule make money, and so our friends at OfCamelot are unable to fight the host company or buy their name back. The site formerly known as Classes.OfCamelot.com can now be found at http://www.classesofcamelot.com. The forums belonging to OfCamelot are now located at http://Camelotofforums.com, if you’re trying to find your old home. OfCamelot was and will be one of my favorite places to lurk, and I wish that crew the best of luck in getting their news page back up and running. Q: Are you going to wipe Mordred before you send it live? A: Yes. Everyone starts over from scratch when we finish beta. No, we haven’t decided when that is. We just moved to phase 2, and if all the testers report bugs and exploits as soon as they find them, we’ll be finished that much faster. Phase 3 will bring our population to capacity, so stay tuned. Please don’t send me any more email asking if you can join the beta test – the original applicant pool still has thousands of people in it! Q: What’s the strike team doing? A: There are a whole wad of spell lines being re-examined at this time. No, I can’t talk about which ones yet. As soon as I have permission from the spell designer, I’ll tell the world. Speaking of websites and Mordred, someone out there sent me a link to their new website devoted to the Mordred server. Looked like a neat project, and I was planning to link to it… except the dog ate my email. Dear Site Host – resend, please, I can’t find the link. Sorry about that! Have a good and safe weekend, everyone.