Ignore Defense
The next update will include bug fixes to the Ignore Defense (ITD) mechanic which will bring massive changes to damage output and survivability.

Until now, all ITD skills have been ignoring ALL of the target's armor, instead of the intended percent of the ITD skill. This wasn't too much of a problem in vanilla Iris since there wasn't really that many skills with ITD and also defenses were a lot lower. Now that we have the 3rd jobs with a lot more ITD skills, and players with huge amounts of defense, the difference between normal skills and skills with ITD is absolutely huge.

I believe fixing this long standing bug will bring about quite a change to gameplay, making it a lot more enjoyable, especially in PvP, but other changes will more than likely be needed to get some balance, including increasing the damage of some jobs and lowering the defenses of others. We will also need to re-tune some of the PvE encounters and dungeons, especially those with timers such as world bosses.

I will most likely introduce this bug fix very soon along with some changes to the heavy armor wearing jobs like the Templar, and then watch carefully and start re-tuning some of the content and jobs.

Glitch Casting
Since I know our melee community will be feeling the hurt of this bug fix I will also be addressing the Glitch Casting bug. Now I know this can also be used by melee, but it's most effective when used by magic based casters, so to keep some form of balance it will be addressed.

Due to the nature of Iris and the way it was designed, it is very susceptible to latency issues, and with that comes problems with timing between the client (you) and the server (us), allowing for things like Glitch Casting. So, it's very difficult to fix without massive updates to the game engine.

So, what I propose to do is make all instant damage and healing skills fall under the Global Cooldown rule which means there will be a 1s delay between these skills. Buffs and utility spells will not be affected by the Global Cooldown. Some of your skills already have this so you should know what I am talking about. Basically, all spells with global cooldown will go into 1s cooldown each time another spell is used, effectively putting a stop to Glitch Casting.

The side-effect of this change means that your character will automatically weave your auto-attack with your spells, because your auto-attack's cooldown will finish whilst you are casting your spell. Right now, with no Global Cooldown you can hit your next spell before your auto-attack fires, this will no longer be possible. The only way around this (that I can currently think of) would be to add a longer cooldown to auto-attack and adjust the damage efficiency slightly to make up for it, but I am still thinking about this.

Edit: I realise caster damage will be reduced by both of these changes and once I see just how much I will be able to make adjustments where necessary to keep casters viable. I may also consider introducing a new stat that reduces the Global Cooldown giving everyone the opportunity to have faster spells, not just those that can glitch.

Vortex
I am still testing fixes to Vortex exploits but it's looking good so far. I will apply my fixes and then request some of you to help me test it properly because it's difficult and time consuming to do it myself locally, and also very difficult to actually perform the exploit without any latency.

Other
There will be other minor bugs and exploits fixed in this update but I won't mention them here. Don't want to give anyone any ideas :P

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free as always.

Sedy