Maintenance for the week of January 19:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – January 19
• NA megaservers for patch maintenance – January 21, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 10:00AM EST (15:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for patch maintenance – January 21, 9:00 UTC (4:00AM EST) - 15:00 UTC (10:00AM EST)
The maintenance is complete, and the PTS is now back online and patch 11.3.1 is available.
Alessia, Chal and Ash courtyard change
Alessia, Chalman, and Ash keeps now have a larger “courtyard” area within the main gate to prevent players from jumping up to the inner keep from the gatehouse using a physics exploit.
This is not a small change. A new 3 window wall exists forward of the postern. It's no longer possible to hit the inner door from the wall using ballista. Hitting the D-Ring from the towers is also much harder and you can't reach all the way to the grate over the inner door. With catapults you cannot reach the ring at all from the towers, and you cannot reach the towers from the ring either. The larger courtyard makes more room for siege, but there is no way to counter the ring from the walls. It's completely changed the META tactic for taking these keeps. Not saying that it's a bad thing, just that it's not a minor change.
Lastly, the Alessia front door was already very hard to take (much more so than chal or ash) but moving the FD forward has made it impossible to range it. That keep is impenetrable now, you should rethink the terrain in font of it a bit .