GENERAL
We have increased the maintenance warning timer to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. Unfortunately, this requires us to patch the game, so this patch will be the last one with a 15-minute warning.

STABILITY
Fixed another issue causing crashes when players used Cooldown Reducing talents or effects and Cooldown Recovery. This is the issue that was primarily affecting Rime players, but should also prevent crashes for all heroes related to cooldown reduction.

SPIRIT ABILITY UPDATE
Spirit ability charge lost upon death has been reduced to 25%, was 50%.

TARIQ
Auto Attack / Heavy Strike damage increased by 10%.
Leap Slam damage increased by 15%.
Raging Tempest's tooltip incorrectly stated that Raging Currents increases critical strike chance by 1.5% per stack. Now correctly states each stack increases critical strike chance by 1%.
Culling Strike's base damage increased by 33%.
Added information on Culling Strike's tooltip to clarify that the ability does not affect the swing timer.
Intimidate cooldown reduced to 150 seconds, down from 180 seconds.
Intimidated enemies can now take 100% more damage before the fear breaks.
Talent: Blood & Thunder now increases Chain Lightning damage by 25%, up from 20%.

HELENA
Helena's maximum Toughness value is based on her strength (1200% of Strength baseline). This has been increased to 1800% Strength.
Helena's Toughness generation from Shields Up, Shield Slam & successful blocks is also based on her strength. All three abilities now have 50% increased Toughness generation.
The above 2 changes cause Toughness generation to function the same as before, while reducing the amount of Toughness lost when taking damage, improving her overall damage mitigation.
The amount of Toughness generated by successful blocks has been increased by an additional 25% (from 4% Toughness per block, to 5%).
Shields Up duration increased to 12 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

MEIKO
Serenity no longer has a global Cooldown.
Stone Shield is now more resilient. The health of each stone has been increased by 33%.
Talent: Spirited Advance had an issue causing the free applications of Spirited Strikes and Spirited Vortex to not work properly. This has been fixed.
Talent: Harsh Winds tooltip clarified to indicate that the attack speed slow only affects enemy auto attacks.
Talent: Forbidden Technique now accumulates 15% of all damage you deal to the target, up from 10%.

RIME
Talent: Glacial Assault now requires 4 stacks to activate, down from 5.

SYLVIE
Talent: Bluey's Gambit damage reduction when placed on another player increased to 10%, up from 5%.
Talent: Bloomin' Boomshrooms now heals allies near the target for 75% intellect per explosion, up from 50%.

PROGRESSION
All types of Ingots and Aethers will now continue dropping as the difficulty increases.
Ingot and Aether drop chances continue increasing up to difficulty 24.
End of dungeon group loot UI updated to support showing up to 8 items for players, as there now is a small chance for players to get all 3 Ingots, all 3 Aethers, an Item, and a Gem in a single chest.
Fixed an issue with the 'Might of the Minotaur II' ruby gem power causing it to only provide 1% increased intellect for intellect heroes. It now correctly increases intellect by 10%.
Fixed an issue with item scrapping UI, causing items in the scrap window to become scrapped when a player pressed the "Eject Gem" button.

CURSES
Blood Shards damage reduced to 2.5%, down from 3% (tooltip incorrectly stated 4%, now updated to 2.5%).
Binding Ice now roots the afflicted player for 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
Meteor Rain's fragments now have 10% smaller hit boxes.
The killscore break points that cause Malevolent Spirits to appear is now every 12% in dungeons and 24% in adventures, down from every 10% in dungeons and 20% in adventures.
Carnage now causes 10% of all damage dealt by players being replicated as healing on the group, down from 20%.
Challenge now increases non-boss enemies' health and damage by 10%, down from 15%.
Ultimatum now increases boss health and damage by 10%, down from 15%.

DEMONIC RITUAL
PROPHET EZ'RATH
Wicked Hook ability is now visible on the boss timer.
Increased minimum range of Wicked Hook to 1500 (was 1000).
Wicked Hook's initial damage reduced by 35%.

ICE CAVES
ELDRIN ASSASSIN
Poison Dagger initial damage reduced by 24%.

CITHREL'S ASCENT
BLADE OF CITHREL
Ice Breaker damage reduced by 17%.

Public Playtest Patch Notes - February 28