During yesterday’s RIFT 2.1 Hotfix #9, Trion threw in an unexpected change that took most of RIFT’s PvP community by surprise. Our PvP gear now has quite a bit more valor on it. Trion felt that players, overall, were dying too quickly during PvP, and this was somewhat evident by the fact that most DPS souls ran with a pocket healer or used a special survivability/tank spec just for PvP fights.

Is the change a step in the right direction? Most players think so. The time to kill (TTK) between two DPS souls is quite a bit longer now, giving players more time to utilize more abilities. This ideally means we should see a greater variety of specs in Warfronts. Healers, however, seem to be extremely powerful now, which means that the system may need further adjusting.

Daglar spoke out in defense of the changes yesterday when players argued on the forums that the changes made PvP battles far too long. Keep reading to see what he had to say.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Rifts will now drop Sourceshards and Inscribed Sourcestones based on their opened level, preventing some Rifts opened with the Planar Attunement lures from dropping incorrectly low-level Sourceshard items.
* Due to the above change, Inscribed Sourcestones now drop from level 40+ Rifts (lowered from level 45+).
* Zone events have been updated to allow for any Rift or Invasion of a specified planar type to count toward the event objectives.
* Increased the rate at which Invasions scale in high-level zones; the Invasions should be somewhat beefier when the zones are highly populated.

GENERAL
* Hammerknell: Taught certain NPCs why killstealing is bad, to fix a case where raids could kill Akylios without getting credit.
* Hammerknell: Grugonim: Corrosive Bile and Unstable Spores have had their projectile speeds reduced, damage lowered, time between uses increased, and a new warning message.
* Fixed the Mathosian version of the Exponent’s Hauberk so it looks like the version everyone else got!
* The Harbinger of Regulos companion pet item is now tradable.
* Nightblade: Blackout: No longer causes spell-based attacks to miss. Duration has been reduced to 5 seconds from 6 seconds.
* Gloamwood: A Woman Scorned: Seriously, the Hag’s Curse shouldn’t get stuck on people anymore.
* Quests in instances containing cross-shard LFG members (ex: dungeons) now work properly with quests that require you to use a quest item in a specific location.
* Dark Pulsing Crystals are now available for purchase with Inscribed Sourcestone.
* Fixed a bug with selecting targets for abilities cast through the /cast slash command.

WORLD EVENT
* Slightly reduced the difficulty of the first unstable stage of Ashes of History Rifts, ‘Gold Tenders’ and ‘Forged Menace’.
* The World Event quest sticky has less blank space around the on-screen text.

CLIENT
* The client should now be able to log back in properly after recovering from a crash!

WORLD EVENT
* Rune King Seals have been made Account Bound so you can send them to your other characters to purchase class-specific goods!
* New Runeguard shoulder items are available on the World Event merchant.
* Lowered the crafting material cost of the recipes gained through the Hammerknell World Event merchant.
* Waves of Madness: Health on Massive Tidal Cores and Shade Idols has been significantly reduced. Tidal Controllers and Shade Fiends have had their damage halved.
* Rift: Ancient Souls: If the Hammerknell Priest dies in Stage 4, you still get quest credit for progressing the Rift past Stage 3. Adjusted Stage 4 difficulty.
* If a character still has Phase 1 event quests that are no longer available, they will be auto-completed.

GENERAL
* Major versions of Rifts now also count toward Defender achievements for each zone.
* The super annoying bug where action bar transparency settings weren’t being saved is now fixed.
* Fixed an issue causing effects that prevent death, or effects that trigger off of death, to work incorrectly in rare situations.
* The zone event A Clash of Power will no longer broadcast to the entire world rather than its own zone.
* Scarwood Reach: The Ancient Wardstone quests Keep Away and Knockoff should now complete properly.
* Shimmersand: Tainted Earth: Fixed an issue that would occasionally prevent the elementals from appearing when summoned.
* Stonefield: Fixed the instant respawn of Rocky Shamblers in Far Mine Loop.
(Source)

Hotfix #9

GENERAL
* Improved visibility of Rogue combo points on the overhead combat meter.

ZONES
* Adjusted the amount of Notoriety awarded in Iron Pine Peaks to bring it in line with other level-cap zones.

GLOAMWOOD
* Being polymorphed by the Hag’s Curse is now far less lethal – NPCs that were kill-on-sight are now neutral.

MOONSHADE HIGHLANDS
* Honor Them: This quest will now grant updates for the whole group at once.

SHIMMERSAND
* The Desert Queen: Akala weekly quest now awards Plaques of Achievement on subsequent completions.
* Final Preparations: Focuser Chest is now much more focused on working.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS
* Another fix for Expert Dungeon lockouts not being reset at their scheduled time.

CHARMER’S CALDERA
* Cyclorax’s Shocking Blast now properly ignores line-of-sight.

GREENSCALE’S BLIGHT [Raid]
* Fixed a bug with Sticky Slime not working consistently.

Prince Hylas
* Slightly reduced the absorption amount of Spiritual Barrier.
* Modified the increase of Soul Fracture damage by Avenging Wrath.

CLIENT
* Coin Lock: Improvements to better detect logins from the same network location when using a large ISP or proxy service.