We’re working on several balance changes to PvP and PvM, which as you might expect, is tricky. We need your help and input to make changes that are as fair as possible for every profession. This process will not happen overnight, as there are many variables to consider.

To help, we have created a PvP Test Shard (TC9) that we will continually update as we make changes. If you enjoy PvP, we hope you’ll log onto TC9 and hack away at your fellow players. We’ll be watching the carnage, tweaking to make it a more fair and balanced carnage, and listening to your feedback.

The changes currently on the TC9 PvP Test Shard are:
• Direct damage attacks (Armor Ignore & critical hits on Lightning Strike) are now capped at a maximum of 35 damage for PvP (no cap for PvM).
• Word of Death now properly does chaos damage instead of direct damage. Chaos damage means that each time the spell is used, it will use a random type of damage, such as energy, physical, etc.
• The Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence stats now have a hard cap of 150.

These changes are currently slated to be released with Publish 38 as the first fix for these issues, which we will continue to work on over the next few months.

Additionally, we are trying a bit of an experiment with this shard. We have disabled all random number generator seeding in the server. This should have the following effects:
• The "streakiness" commonly seen with the random number generator should go away.
• The skill-raising technique known as "8x8" will be removed by this change.