Hey folks,

We're making some pretty major changes to somewhat tone down venom-lock routes.

The long and short of it is that we're doing away with the Renew skill from Hunting and putting Fitness in its place, along with some changes to help balance out its initial introduction. For now they are mostly targeted at the immediately obvious issues, such as class specific lockbreakers, but the finer tuning of classes will be dealt with over time.

The hope is that it'll provide a more varied combat field for you all to engage in, making it easier and more valuable to stack lesser afflictions in routes that don't necessarily block cures and reducing the power of bruteforcing a lock without some kind of class-oriented skill to back it up.

To quell any worries- I don't realistically see venom-lock classes struggling too harshly despite the addition of Fitness to everyone. They often fight against classes with lockbreakers as is and can generally still succeed. But as always, I'll be keeping a close eye on this over time.

You can find the changes below. Thanks!

Afflictions
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- Frozen balance recovery malus reduced to 0.6 seconds, down from 1.

Arcanism
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- Countercurrent proc chance lowered to a 2% base rate, down from 6%.

Assassination
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- Shrugging will now cure a random venom-type affliction.
* The affliction does not need to be sourced from a venom.
- Shrugging balance recovery time lowered to 2 seconds, down from 3.

Corpus
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- The second affliction cured by Purify is now delayed by 2 seconds.
- Purify equilibrium recovery time increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.

Desiccation
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- Scour no longer cures slickness and the cooldown is removed.

Hunting
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- New Skill: Fitness.
* All versions of Fitness in across various classes has been removed.
- Removed Skill: Renew.

Illumination / Tectonics
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- Cleansing / Thermics cooldown increased to 25 seconds, up from 20.

Purification
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- Zenith no longer cures a random affliction.

Shamanism
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- Elder Shaman proc chance lowered to a 2% base rate, down from 8%.

Shapeshifting
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- Removed Skill: Shedding.

Tarot / Hyalincuru
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- Fool / Fire cooldown increased to 20 seconds, up from 18.

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 2nd of Midsummer, in the year 503 MA.
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