EpicDuel
Nightwraith
| Friday, June 19, 2026
EpicDuel is live with new rares, new quality-of-life features, and a major change to damage calculations!
We've made some significant changes to the Inventory and Finder interfaces to make sorting and finding items easier than ever.
As stated in a previous post, all alts in Factions have been removed. For the purposes of this update, an alt is another character that is on the same account that is a member of the same faction. If you had 5 alts in an account (including your main), then 4 will be removed, leaving the account with the lowest character Id (first created). This has been a rule for a long time, but only recently have we had the means to enforce it directly and dramatically. Attempts to get around this rule will be harshly enforced against the player and faction involved.
TheAlonzoHarris' Shop has been updated with the following items:
Due to ongoing complains about high damage from certain skill combinations, we've made several adjustments to how critical strikes interact with other damage mechanics to reduce their upper limits from their present extremes. These extremes became especially pronounced after new skills were introduced that guarantee critical damage. However, rather than a targeted nerf to the force-crit skills, we opted to reduce the overall impact of crit/defense ignore stacking with some mechanical changes.
Defense Ignore Cap:
Critical strikes now have a maximum combined defense ignore of 50% across all sources. Previously, equipping cores and skills that each independently stripped defense could stack beyond this threshold. The 50% cap applies to the sum of the base crit ignore (30%), passive core bonuses (Massive Strike), and active skill defense ignore (Icy Overkill) combined.
Damage Percent Adjustment:
Skills that deal bonus damage via a percentage modifier (such as 115% damage skills) will no longer have that bonus reflected in the critical strike damage ceiling. The crit calculation now uses the base damage value before percentage bonuses are applied, meaning crit and damage percentage bonuses each do their own independent work rather than amplifying each other.
Rage and Critical Strike Interaction:
Critical strikes and Rage attacks will now be evaluated independently. When a Rage attack already deals more damage than a critical strike would produce, the Rage damage is preserved without an additional critical bonus on top. When a critical strike would deal more damage than the Rage attack, the critical damage is used instead. Whichever is stronger wins, but they no longer combine to push damage beyond their individual limits. A critical Rage used to be an unexpected bonus, but predictable crits made this combination too powerful.
I fell asleep. What does this all mean?
Stacking crit-boosting cores with defense ignoring skills will be less effective, especially when combined with Rage.
Formula:
For the Wiki folks those who love to deep dive into the formulas, here is a detailed breakdown of damage before and after this change.
Scenario: An attack does 115% damage with 30% defense ignore. This attack crits on a Rage. A passive boosts critical defense ignore by 15% (additive).
Before:
Gross damage = (596 × 1.15) = 686
Defense = (0.70 × 337) = 235
Defense after Rage = 235 - (0.4233 × 235) = 235 - 99 = 136
Damage = 686 - 136 = 550
Defense ignore = 30 + 15 = 45 (uncapped)
Crit adjusted defense = (0.55 × 136) = 75
Damage post Crit = 686 - 75 = 611
Crit dmg. increase = 611 - 550 = 61
Min. Crit increase = 30 + 26 = 56
(61 > 56, use Damage post Crit)
Final damage = 611
After:
Gross damage = 596 (pre-damage percent)
Defense = (0.70 × 337) = 235
Defense after Rage = 235 - (0.4233 × 235) = 235 - 99 = 136
Damage = (596 × 1.15) - 136 = 686 - 136 = 550
Defense ignore = (30 + 15) = 45
Defense ignore = (45 + 30) = (capped at 50)
Defense ignore cap = 0.50
Crit adjusted defense = (0.50 × 136) = 68
Damage post Crit = 596 - 68 = 528
Rage comparison:
Damage post Crit (528) <= damage (550) → 550
(Higher damage is chosen, rather than stacking)
Final damage = 550
We've got some amazing content in the works for release this Summer including new epic boss battles, new mission, npc AI enhancements, and more quality-of-life features!
