The pass turned around: Mercenary cut, Withered Knight raised, Blackarrow untouched
On 12 August, Mercenary was the only one of the six classes the balance pass did not name at all. Seven days later it takes the largest single-class block in either pass — thirteen lines, seven of them reductions. The mirror image happens beside it: Withered Knight takes ten lines and every one is an increase, with no cut anywhere. And Blackarrow, which was cut on 6 August and again on the 12th, is absent from this post entirely. That is a direction, and it is worth being clear that a direction is not a tier — nobody has played matches on these numbers yet, so the tier list on this site has not moved and will not until somebody with footage moves it.
- Mercenary's defensive core is what got cut: Perfect Block staggers for less, Perfect Defense costs more Energy in solo, and Block Damage Boost gives a smaller shield — and separately stops persisting through a weapon switch, so the same talent is reduced and de-duplicated in one patch.
- Stacked Slash loses PvP damage with no mode named. Unlike the 12 August cuts to Blackarrow and Sorcerer, which said solo-only in the note itself, nothing here restricts it to solo.
- Three Mercenary cooldowns come down — Stonebreaker Slash, Shield Slam, and Whirling Cut (Block) in trio — so the block is not purely a nerf, but Whirling Cut (Dash) goes the other way.
- Withered Knight gets mobility on almost everything (Greatsword opener, Opportunistic Thrust, Pursuit, Sprinting Slash), Super Armor on a fully charged heavy, and cheaper Parry and Breakthrough Charge.
- The one line that adds an effect rather than moving a number: Withering Mark's sword wave now slows what it hits and cuts the target's dodge distance, and Joint Pierce reduces dodge distance too. Shortening an opponent's dodge is a new kind of tool for the class.
- Shadowstrix, which took the most detailed cut on 12 August, gets one nerf here — a wind-up animation on Free Movement — and four fixes, including Lightweight failing to grant i-frames on a dodge.
The stutter has a third cause now, and this post fixes none of it
This is the part worth reading slowly, because three consecutive posts have said different things about the same symptom. On 12 August the notes claimed client hitching, stuttering and crashes were fixed. On the 15th that claim had not held, and the cause was named for the first time as cloud server CPU hyper-threading, addressed by server configuration changes on the 13th and 14th. Now a third explanation arrives: Bellring says it set up dedicated server frame-rate monitoring, which found that refreshing chimes and treasure chests can trigger excessive computation loads and cause performance hiccups. Note the tense. The post says these issues "will be systematically resolved in upcoming updates" — it is describing a diagnosis and a plan, not a change that shipped today.
- Nothing in this update fixes the chime and chest load. If you are still stuttering after installing it, that is consistent with what the post says rather than evidence of a new problem.
- The monitoring itself is the actual news: this is the first post to describe a tool for finding these causes rather than a response to reports, which is why the explanation got more specific.
- Three causes in seven days does not mean two were wrong. Hyper-threading and computation spikes are different layers and both can be true — but it does mean nobody should treat any single one of them as the explanation.
Soul Harvest: three corrections that change what a completed ritual owed you
Soul Harvest shipped on 12 August and its reward route was only described on the 15th. This post fixes three faults inside that chain, and two of them mean players were being shorted rather than merely inconvenienced.
- Mistchaser Shop purchase limits failed to refresh after completing the Soul Harvest ritual. That is the shop where the Season-exclusive Soulbound Serpent Crystal is bought, so a stock check made before today may have shown limits you had in fact already earned back.
- The special Soul Incubators spawned during the purification prayer phase incorrectly dropped Soul Cocoons when looted. Cocoons are the altar currency, so this was loot arriving from the wrong place.
- Smuggler Woodlings failed to spawn correctly in a match once the Soul Harvest had begun — a whole spawn missing from runs where the ritual triggered.
- Also fixed: Gyldening damage calculating abnormally under specific circumstances, and the Soulgnawer rendering without textures.
The quality-of-life lines most likely to affect your next run
The fix list under the balance pass is long — roughly two dozen entries — and most of it is interface repair. A few are worth knowing before you queue.
- A brief window of invulnerability when entering a Mist Lord's room. Doorway deaths are a known way to lose a run before the fight starts.
- Scavenger Squad now refreshes required materials across all modes once a task is completed and its rewards claimed.
- A monster hitting you while you accepted an in-match task could lock you out of every action. This is the third distinct input lock fixed since 12 August, and the known-issues page keeps the raid soft-lock open rather than closing it on the strength of it.
- A terrain collision fault in Hallowgrove that left players floating in the air, and voice chat from previous teammates continuing to be audible after a match ended.
- Controller users get a Favorite function, smoother Star Silver refining, and distinct vibration feedback for fall damage.
- Listed under Previously Fixed Issues: equipping a Pro Combat Bag could block match entry through an equipment value mismatch error — relevant because the 15 August appreciation mail handed out two of them.