It’s time to roll out the public test realm and v1.0.5 is launching on the PTR server. The PTR account creation is now active on the US Battle.Net but not on the EU as yet. You can find the PTR patch notes after the break.
Patch 1.0.5 will soon be available for testing on the PTR. Once the PTR is up and ready, we’ll enable posting in this forum and the PTR Bug Report forum so you can share your feedback and report any issues you may experience while playing.
In the meantime, be sure to check out the patch 1.0.5 PTR patch notes and the information below to find out how to set up your PTR account.
How to Participate:
To participate in the public test, you must have a Diablo III game license attached your Battle.net account that’s in good standing (i.e. it hasn’t been suspended or banned). While the 1.0.5 PTR will only be in available in English, French, German, and Korean languages, accounts from all regions are eligible to participate.
You will also need to create a PTR account by logging in to your Battle.net Account Managementpage. We will be enabling PTR account creation soon (we’ll provide an update once it’s available), and once it’s up you’ll simply need to select your Diablo III game license and then click “Create a PTR account.” After you’ve created your account, you’ll be able to download the client from the Diablo III landing page, or from your Games Download page in Account Management.
Please note that will not be able to log in to the PTR client until it’s live.
Character Copy:
The option to copy your existing Diablo III characters from your live account to the PTR will become available once the PTR is live. Only one region per account can be copied at a time, however, so if you choose to copy characters from your account in a different region please note that any previously copied PTR characters will be lost.
We’ll be providing more details, including an FAQ, once the 1.0.5 PTR is available, so stay tuned!
New System: Monster Power
Similar to the “Players 8″ command in Diablo II, Monster Power is a system designed to give players more control over how challenging enemies are in each difficulty. With this system, players can choose to increase the health and damage of monsters according to different “power levels” and in return they’ll receive scaling bonuses to experience (for heroes levels 1-59) as well as boosts to Magic Find and Gold Find (for heroes in Inferno) which will stack above the 300% cap. The option to increase Monster Power will be available to all players starting at level 1 in the Quest Selection window, and can be adjusted separately for Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulties.
New Event: Infernal Machine
The Infernal Machine is a device that will allow level 60 players to battle “uber” versions of some of Sanctuary’s most nefarious bosses. While the rewards for defeating these bosses will be great, some assembly is required. Only the most powerful Nephalem can unlock the secrets to building the Infernal Machine, but once forged the device can be used to open portals to special encounters featuring not one, but two bosses which have been augmented from their original versions, both in terms of difficulty and appearance. Defeating each boss pair will provide players with extra items and gold, as well as a chance to find components for a new Legendary ring
GENERAL
- Resplendent Chests will now operate similarly to Elite packs in Inferno difficulty:
- When players open a Resplendent Chest, they will receive a reward based on how many Nephalem Valor stacks they have active at the time
- Opening a Resplendent Chest will grant one stack of Nephalem Valor
- Major in-game events will now grant one stack of Nephalem Valor when completed by a level 60 character in Inferno difficulty
- If completed in a multiplayer game, all eligible characters in the party will receive the buff regardless of whether they participated in the event or were close to the event’s location
- Major in-game events in Inferno difficulty that involve a special chest or Unique monster (ex: ) will now also drop additional loot for every stack of Nephalem Valor a player has active at the time of the event’s completion
- Several events have had Unique monsters added to them for this purpose
- Experience Shrines can now appear in Inferno difficulty
- Two new shrines have been added to all difficulty levels:
- Empowered Shrine – Increased resource regeneration and reduced cooldowns
- Fleeting Shrine – Increased movement speed and pickup radius
- Followers, pets, and summoned creatures will no longer attack enemies that are in an idle state unless the player is within 10 yards of the enemy
- The reduction of snare effects against Elite monsters has been reduced (in the player’s favor):
- Normal: 20% to 0%
- Nightmare: 30% to 15%
- Hell: 40% to 25%
- Inferno: 40% to 25%
- Crowd control effects will now be affected by diminishing returns. To learn more about how diminishing returns will work in Diablo III (and why these changes are an overall buff to player CC), click here!
AUCTION HOUSE
- Search parameters will now save when switching between the gold and real-money auction house
- An additional sortable column has been added to the results window
- This column will have a drop-down box populated with each of the Preferred Stats that players indicated for their search (only one Preferred Stat can be selected at a time)
- The Preferred Stat list is now sorted alphabetically
- A button has been added to allow players to quickly reset Preferred Stat filters to “None”
- Players can now search for +Damage on off-hand items
- When searching for items to purchase, an option to “autofill” stats based on what the player is currently wearing has been added
- Similarly, when selling an item, a “Find Similar” button has been added to allow players to quickly search for items currently up for auction that have similar stats
- Bug Fixes
- When claiming stackable items from the auction house, the claimed items will always attempt to fill out partial stacks completely before falling back to using an open slot in your inventory
- The color-coding for the “Quality” drop-down menu for Pages & Recipes has been updated to match the color-coding for all other categories
- Fixed a bug that was causing the minimum value for the Spirit Regen affix to not filter items correctly
BATTLE.NET
- The “Friend of Friend” feature for finding and adding Real ID friends is now available for Diablo III
- A new item delivery system has been added that will allow Blizzard to send items directly to players (you may see us testing this feature over the course of the PTR)
- Achievements
- An Achievement button has been added to the in-game hotbar
- Players can now link Achievements in chat
- Banners
- Players can now customize their banner in-game while in town
- Each banner reward type now has sub-categories organized by the content they were rewarded from (Hardcore, Crafting, Challenges, etc.)
- New unlocked banner rewards are now highlighted so they can be found more easily
- Chat
- Players can now change font color (per channel) and size
- Clicking on items linked in chat will now provide a comparison tooltip based on what you are currently wearing
- Several additional improvements have been made to in-game chat to increase usability
BOSSES
- Azmodan
- Bug Fixes
- Azmodan should no longer be able to cast Flame Meteors or continue channeling his Laser attack while stunned
CLASSES
- General
- Defensive bonuses provided by certain class skills have been reduced. To learn more about these changes and why they were made, click here!
- Barbarian
- Active Skills
- Battle Rage
- Duration increased from 30 seconds to 120 seconds
- Hammer of the Ancients
- Increased Critical Hit chance is now based on the amount of Fury the player has when Hammer of the Ancients is activated:
- For every 5 Fury a player has, Hammer of the Ancients has a 1% increased Critical Hit chance
- Skill Rune – Smash
- The radius of Smash has been slightly increased to help resolve an issue that caused Hammer of the Ancients to occasionally miss targets immediately in front of the player
- Skill Rune – The Devil’s Anvil
- Movement speed reduction increased from 60% to 80%
- Leap
- Skill Rune – Iron Impact
- Now grants 100% bonus armor per enemy hit for 3 seconds
- Overpower
- Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds
- Rend
- Rend should now more reliably hit enemies that are running away
- Skill Rune – Mutilate
- Mutilate has been redesigned to slow enemies by 60% for the duration of Rend
- Sprint
- Skill Rune – Run Like the Wind
- Proc coefficient reduced from 0.2 to 0.08
- Threatening Shout
- Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 10 second
- Skill Rune – Grim Harvest
- Now also has a chance to drop a health globe
- War Cry
- Cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds
- Fury generated reduced from 30 to 20
- Skill Rune – Charge!
- Fury generated reduced from 60 to 40
- Skill Rune – Impunity
- Bonus resistance reduced from 50% to 20%
- Whirlwind
- Fury cost from 16 to 9
- Skill Rune – Blood Funnel
- Healing increased from 1% to 2% of Maximum Life per Critical Hit
- Passive Skills
- Animosity
- Bonus Fury regeneration increased from 10% to 20%
- Inspiring Presence
- Healing increased from 1% to 2% Maximum Life per second
- Unforgiving
- Fury regeneration has been quadrupled, increased to 2 Fury every 1 second (up from 1 Fury every 2 seconds)
- Demon Hunter
- Active Skills
- Bola Shot
- Explosion radius increased from 7 yards to 17 yards
- Skill Rune – Volatile Explosives
- Explosion radius increased from 14 yards to 20 yards
- Chakram
- Chakram will now always fire a projectile, regardless of distance or if an enemy is targeted
- Companion
- Added a 30-second cooldown
- Reduced each Companion’s attack cooldown from 1.5/2 seconds to 1 second
- Weapon damage increased from 30% to 38%, but they can no longer critically hit
- Companion’s damage now scales with attack speed
- Skill Rune – Wolf Companion
- Wolf Companion has been redesigned to be a more durable pet:
- Now has comparable durability to one Zombie Dog
- New attack: 120-degree Cleave with a 10-yard radius that hits for 94% weapon damage
- Skill Rune – Spider Companion
- Spider Companion has been redesigned to be a more durable pet:
- Has slightly more durability than the Wolf Companion
- New attack: 120-degree Cleave with a 10-yard radius that hits for 38% weapon damage and Slows every enemy it hits by 60% for 2 seconds
- Skill Rune – Boar Companion
- Boar Companion has been redesigned to be a more durable pet:
- Has more durability than the Spider Companion
- New attack: Single-target attack that hits for 38% weapon damage
- Provides (155 @ 60) Life per second and a 15% bonus to all resistances for the Demon Hunter
- Evasive Fire
- Skill Rune – Shrapnel has been replaced with a new rune: “Hardened”
- Hardened increases your Armor by 50% for 3 seconds and replaces the backflip
- Skill Rune – Parting Gift
- Weapon damage increased from 45% to 55%
- Poison bomb delay reduced from 1.2 seconds to 0.6 seconds
- Sentry
- Cost changed from 10 Discipline to 30 Hatred
- Increased from weapon damage from 55% to 88%
- Players can now have two turrets active at once, but an 8-second cooldown has been added to compensate
- Sentry can no longer critically hit
- Skill Rune – Spitfire Turret
- Weapon damage increased from 8% to 15%
- Skill Rune – Vigilant Watcher
- Vigilant Watcher has been redesigned and now reduces the cooldown of Sentry by 2 seconds instead of increasing the duration
- Skill Rune – Chain of Torment
- Weapon damage increased from 80% to 100%
- Shadow Power
- Base spell changed from 20% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 15% Life Steal for 5 seconds
- Skill Rune – Night Bane
- Changed from 4 Hatred per second for 3 seconds to 3 Hatred per second for 5 seconds
- Skill Rune – Blood Moon
- Changed from 30% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 25% Life Steal for 5 seconds
- Skill Rune – Gloom
- Changed from 65% damage reduction for 3 seconds to 35% damage reduction for 5 seconds
- Skill Rune – Shadow Glide
- Changed from 40% movement speed increase for 3 seconds to 30% movement speed increase for 5 seconds
- Spike Trap
- Skill Rune – Sticky Trap
- Explosion radius increased from 8 yards to 16 yards
- Skill Rune – Bandolier has been replaced with a new rune: “Echoing Blast”
- Echoing Blast gives your Spike Traps three charges with a minimum delay of 1 second between each explosion, and deals damage as Poison
- Strafe
- Movement speed increased from 65% to 75%
- Hatred cost reduced from 16 to 12
- Skill Rune – Equilibrium has been replaced with a new rune: “Emberstrafe”
- Emberstrafe leaves behind fire trail that deals 65% weapon damage per second for 2 seconds
- All rune variants now allow you to walk through enemies while active
- Vault
- Can now be used while under the effect of roots, including Jailer (and will break the effect)
- Skill Rune – Trail of Cinders
- Reduced damage from 1500% to 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds
- Trail can now stack
- Skill Rune – Acrobatics
- Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds
- Passive Skills
- Custom Engineering
- Adds the ability to have a third Sentry turret out a time
- Now also increases the maximum number of Spike Traps you can have out to 6
- Numbing Traps
- Damage reduction reduced from 25% to 20%, but now also works with Grenades and Sentry
- Perfectionist
- Now also increases Life, Armor, and Resistances by 10%
- Thrill of the Hunt
- Thrill of the Hunt has been redesigned:
- Every 7 seconds, your next Hatred spender roots all targets hit by it for 2 seconds. Enemies can only be rooted once every 7 seconds. This does not affect Sentry.
- Now displays a buff icon when ready to use
- Monk
- Active Skills
- Breath of Heaven
- Skill Rune – Infused with Light
- Bonus Spirit regeneration increased from 6 to 8 additional Spirit per hit for 5 seconds
- Dashing Strike
- The strike animation after dashing now scales with attack speed
- Mantra of Evasion
- Skill Rune – Wind Through the Reeds
- Run speed bonus increased from 5% to 8%
- Passive Skills
- Beacon of Ytar
- Cooldown reduction increased from 15% to 20%
- Near Death Experience
- Cooldown reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds
- Pacifism
- Now also works on Freeze and Immobilize effects (note: the tooltip will not say Freeze, because Freezes are classified as a Stun)
- Resolve
- Damage reduction reduced from 25% to 20%
- Seize the Initiative
- Conversion of Dexterity to Armor reduced from 100% to 50%
- Witch Doctor
- Active Skills
- Spirit Barrage
- Skill Rune – Well of Souls
- Will now seek out targets up to 40 yards (up from 25 yards)
- Wall of Zombies
- Cooldown reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds
- Skill Rune – Pile On
- Changed from 745% weapon damage with a 25-second cooldown to 500% weapon damage with a 10-second cooldown and the radius has been slightly increased
- Passive Skills
- Gruesome Feast
- Now shows a buff icon when you have active stacks
- Fetish Sycophants
- Proc chance increased from 3% to 5%
- Jungle Fortitude
- Damage reduction reduced from 20% to 15%
- Wizard
- Active Skills
- Archon: Slow Time
- Slow increased from 30% to 60%
- Blizzard
- Arcane Power cost reduced from 45 to 40 (Snowbound cost will remain the same at 20 Arcane Power)
- Energy Armor
- Armor bonus reduced from 65% to 35%
- Skill Rune – Prismatic Armor
- Resistance bonus reduced from 40% to 25%
- Familiar
- Skill Rune – Ancient Guardian
- Health threshold increased from 35% to 50%
- Skill Rune – Dartling has been replaced with a new rune: “Vigoron”
- Vigoron regenerates Life every second for the wizard
- Hydra
- All runes now properly benefit from Arcane Dynamo’s five-stack damage buff
- Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause the heads of the Hydra to become separated from the base when cast near a wall
- Ice Armor
- Now reduces damage from melee attacks by 8%
- Magic Missile
- Base weapon damage increased from 110% to 125%
- Skill Rune – Charged Blast
- Weapon damage increased from 143% to 162%
- Skill Rune – Split
- Weapon damage increased from 50% to 56%
- Angle of damage reduced from 30 degrees to 20 degrees
- Skill Rune – Seeker
- Weapon damage increased from 121% to 138%
- Skill Rune – Penetrating Blast
- Pierce chance increased from 70% to 100%
- Meteor
- Delay between cast and impact reduced from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds
- Arcane Power cost reduced from 60 to 50
- Ray of Frost
- Movement speed reduction increased from 30% to 60%
- Duration of slow increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
- Arcane Power cost reduced from 20 to 16 per period
- Skill Rune – Numb
- Movement speed reduction increased from 60% to 80%
- Skill Rune – Cold Blood
- Arcane Power cost reduced from 12 to 10 per period
- Skill Rune – Sleet Storm
- Weapon damage increased from 215% to 333%
- Proc scalar reduced from 0.25 to 0.1875
- Skill Rune – Black Ice
- Weapon damage increased from 193% to 387% over 3 seconds
- Slow Time
- Cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds
- Movement speed reduction increased from 30% to 60%
- Skill Rune – Time Shell
- No longer reduces the size of Slow Time
- Skill Rune – Perpetuity
- Now reduces cooldown to 12 seconds (from 16 seconds)
- Spectral Blade
- Weapon damage increased from 135% to 165%
- Angle of damage increased from 60 degrees to 90 degrees
- Range increased from 10 yards to 15 yards (range of Thrown Blades will remain at 20 yards)
- Skill Rune – Deep Cuts
- Weapon damage from Bleed increased from 35% to 45% over 3 seconds
- Skill Rune – Healing Blades
- Removed Critical Hit requirement
- Storm Armor
- Ability has been redesigned to periodically deal 100% weapon damage as Lightning to nearby enemies
- Skill Rune – Reactive Armor
- Redesigned to deal 70% weapon damage as Lightning to ranged and melee attackers
- Skill Rune – Strike Back has been renamed “Thunder Storm”
- All other runes remain unchanged
- Teleport
- Now breaks roots
- Skill Rune – Reversal
- Now ignores line of sight when returning to the casting location
- Wave of Force
- Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds
- Skill Rune – Force Affinity
- Cooldown from 12 seconds to 9 seconds
- Passive Skills
- Unstable Anomaly
- Increased health threshold from 20% to 30%
- Now heals the player to 45% of Maximum Life and slow targets that are knocked back by 60% for 3 seconds
CRAFTING
- Crafting materials can now stack to 500
- Jeweler Designs that drop in the world will now show up as Rare quality (yellow) to make them more visible on the ground
- Salvage now uses the required equip-level of the item instead of the base item level to determine what components the item will be salvaged into
- Example: If an item is an iLevel 60 and has a reduced level requirement of 52, the item will salvage into Hell crafting materials instead of Inferno crafting materials
- This is being done to accommodate the change of item affixes rolling at the monster’s level rather than the item’s level (detailed further in the Items section below)
- Crafting reagents can now be converted up to the next highest level at the Blacksmith at a ratio of 10:1
- Tomes of Training can be converted up to the next highest level at the Blacksmith and Jeweler at a ratio of 10:1
FOLLOWERS
- Templar
- Skills
- Heal
- Now heals both the Templar and the player when cast
- Can now be cast when the player is below 75% health (up from 50%)
- Inspire
- Mana regeneration bonus increased from 2 to 4 Mana per second
- Intervene
- Cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
- Affected radius increased from 6 yards to 10 yards
- Removed the health threshold for when Intervene can be cast
- Spell will now cast whenever the player is hit and off cooldown, regardless of the player’s currently health %
- Intimidate
- Now also reduces the movement speed of enemies that the Templar hits by 60% for 3 seconds
- Scoundrel
- Basic ranged attack weapon damage increased from 25% to 40%
- Skills
- Hysteria
- Cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds
- Poison Bolts
- Weapon damage of initial hit increased from 40% to 100%
- Poison now deals 40% weapon damage over 2 seconds (instead of over 3 seconds)
- Enchantress
- Skills
- Disorient
- Affected radius increased from 4 yards to 6 yards
- Cooldown reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds
- Mass Control
- Cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
- Powered Armor
- Armor bonus reduced from 15% to 5%
- Reflect Missiles
- Reflect Missiles has been replaced with Missile Ward
- Missile Ward reduces incoming damage from ranged attacks by 6%
- Bug Fixes
- Magic Find and Gold Find values inherited from Followers should now respect the 300% cap
- Followers will no longer run in place or run slowly when players perform abilities that augment their movement (ex: Leap, Teleport, Vault, etc.)
ITEMS
- The cast time for identifying Rare items has been reduced to 1 second
- The cast time for identifying Legendary items has been increased to 4 seconds
- The location of Legendary items will now be marked by a column of light as well as a ping on the mini-map the first time they drop, and a new sound has been added
- Affixes on items will now roll their level based on the level of the monster killed (rather than the item’s level)
- Class-specific items will now drop more often
- Items below iLevel 58 no longer drop in Inferno difficulty
- Square-quality gems no longer drop in Inferno difficulty
- Monk class Skill bonuses can now roll on shields
MONSTERS
- Additional health per monster in multiplayer games has been reduced from 75% to 70%
- Damage and health of monsters levels 50-63 have been reduced to coincide with the addition of Monster Power
- Sand Shark AI has been improved:
- Sand Sharks can now use an “Under Sand Attack” while burrowed. The “Under Sand Attack” causes the Sand Shark to charge to the player and do a 10-yard radius earthquake-like attack for low damage.
- Sand Sharks can now walk toward you while above ground, which gives players more time to DPS them.
- Skeleton Fire Mage fire pools, Wood Wraith spore clouds, and Opressor fire breath attacks should now do reduced damages to pets and followers
- Two-handed skeleton executioners have had their escape radius reduced
- The “coolup” has been increased on the Fallen Lunatic’s suicide power from 1-3 seconds to 2-5 seconds, giving players a more predictable time to kill them (or run away) before they explode
- Bug Fixes
- Damage caused by the Reflects Damage affix can no longer be dodged
- Fire Chains monsters should no longer link with burrowed monsters (if a monster burrows while linked with Fire Chains, the link will be removed)
- The explosion effect of a dying Molten monster and the damage done by the effect should now always occur at the same time
- Damage done by the Arcane Sentry beam attack should now properly sync with the beam graphic
- Heralds of Pestilence will now abort their ranged attack if the player uses a power to make themselves un-targetable while the attack is casting (or “winding up”)
BUG FIXES
- Shrines will now buff all players that are within the shrine’s radius or in the same level area
- Nephalem Valor stacks are now restored whenever a player rejoins the last multiplayer game he/she was disconnected from
- The damage stat in the Hero page should now display the appropriate values when switching main and off-hand weapons with a shield
- Fixed a bug where buffs on other players weren’t displaying correctly in the party UI
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to not be able to rejoin a multiplayer game if they switched to a character that was saved to a difficulty level not yet unlocked by the other party members
- Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when mousing over the tooltip for crafting materials
- Removed the initial tick of damage from fire trenches in Keep Depths and slightly reduced the radius
Thanks Muriel for the tip.
Wow…
This looks awesome. Way more stuff in here than I thought there’d be. The NV on events and chests is especially cool and will allow Act 4 farming to be actually viable. Regaining NV after a disconnect is a welcome sight for someone like myself who has lost many a NV stack due to shoddy wifi connections.
Also interested to see what they mean by items now rolling based on moster lvl and not item level. Does that mean items that are much lower item level can now spawn great stats?
I can’t wait for 1.05.
“Does that mean items that are much lower item level can now spawn great stats?”
Most likely, yes. This is how affixes always worked in D1 and D2. Seems they’ve seen the light finally.
It’s like you’re doing a beta test for a beta patch for a game that’s still in beta but is actually retail.
Magical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGTh-m21jKo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IixbZ5ShoHw&feature=related
Hey, if you’re happy with being shoveled a rushed out, barely tested and uninspired game for $60 that’s okay by me. Whatever makes you happy.
ye it looks like we somewhat achieve retail polish at this point – Iam especially excited about ;
*id time reduced to 1 sec
* no more items below 58 in inferno
* affix rolls now based on Monster level and not Itemlevel
also the changes to barb , DH and Wizard seem all reasonable.
i just wish they would have done more with monk and WD
most Monk Passives still suck, and WD still lacks the popular Critical strike synergy and has no mechanic which makes up for that lack.
With the words of thre the Templar:
“Greater and greater”!
P.S. I hope hope that monster level scales with monster power rank because if it doesnt than the monsters in later acts will always drop better loot (based on the change that items now roll affixes depending on the level of monster that dropped it rather than item level).
oh DAMN! DH sounds SICK!
Yes indeed! I was pretty happy with 1.0.4 overall, but I ended up not changing a single skill (I was already using several of those that got buffed with that patch). That will certainly not be true this time. There are so many possibilities for new builds here, I don’t even know where to start.
A strong contender for first on my list to try: Spike Traps/Echoing Blast together with Sentry/Chain of Torment (using Custom Engineering for 3 Sentries plus 6 traps) just sounds insane for the few of us who love setting traps. Factor in Caltrops and some cold or slowing damage and you’re basically setting up a mine field.
I did not at all foresee this many formerly useless skills and passives getting improvements that will make them worth at least a try. We knew companions were getting a pretty solid bump, but damn, some of this stuff is enticing. Strafe could actually be useful due to the walk-through effect. Perfectionist giving Life, Armor, and Rez buffs (although slight, it beats the hell out of its current 10% Disc. cost reduction). Numbing Traps, which was pretty good before, now works with Sentry and Spike Traps. There is just a lot to play around with here.
Plus, they took Bola’s explosion radius, and then they (more than) doubled it! [Sorry, couldn't resist that one.]
And that’s not even mentioning the two HUGE game changers in my opinion:
Evasive Fire/Hardened will almost certainly replace Covering Fire for a large percentage of those using that skill now (not to mention the other Hatred generators).
And of course, Vault now breaks Jailer. If you felt forced into using Smoke Screen before… not so much now. I may be the only DH that isn’t in love with Vault already (I rely completely on Smoke Screen and TA, with RoV/Stampede to clear a path if I get stuck)… but yeah, I think that may change pretty soon.
There is more unmentioned DH goodness in here, but it’s time for me to go set up that PTR account.
Vault breaking jailer is a godsend. All the other changes give us some interesting alternatives to tamper with, we’ll see
Because Covering Fire is the only Evasive Fire rune that I ever actually use, I just automatically assumed that Hardened would have that same ridiculously large arc of insta-hit (hit-scan). Now that I think about it though, that’s probably too good to be true.
Even if it just has the narrow channel like the other EV runes, that %50 armor bonus is still pretty sweet. But… I would probably stick with Covering Fire in that case. I know a lot of people hate it, but I’ve grown to love the backflip as a cheap way to trip TA.
If it does turn out to have the wide arc, it will be godly. Kind of doubting it though. OK, I’m dying to see the tooltip now.
If I understand this correctly (and oh god I hope I do), this the single biggest change of this patch.
I think, that now, items 58-63 will roll iLvl 63 affixes if they drop from mLvL 63 enemies. This means, EVERY SINGLE ITEM that drops in Act 3 inferno, for example, has potential to roll amazing stats outside the base item.
This won’t help the lower base damage weapons or offhands, but this will will be a major boost to armors and an incredible boost to jewelry.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t mean every item in act 1 will have ilvl 61 stats (63 items too).
Perhaps boosting the difficulty level also increases monster level so it would be possible to have “mlvl 63″ monsters in Act 1/2
I would prefer this over finding rare rings/ammys/armor with ilvl 50 in A1… at least there’s a much higher chance of them not being completely useless. This way people can grab a cheap blue 900+dps weapon from the AH, then farm A1 inferno for other gear to move onto A2/A3 (Yes, use the AH since D3 is a “trading game” by design–quote from Blizzard).
Its sad, that they didnt applied the “lower quantity – better quality” system for the drop. I mean, how can you upgrade a system, where you get dozens of yellows? It will be always a lot of junk, in opposite, too many good drops is also nonsense. Well, yeah, the legendaries… but they still often suck, so there is no “yeah!-great!-awesome!”-guarantee for greens and brownies (which should be). I see no solution able within the actual loot mechanism…
AykistheGreek:
Yes, that means astral,warlord and doom are not automatically useless and sovereign is a bit better as they can spawn with the same affixes as archon. It always annoyed me that there are 16(?) armor tiers in the game and we only use ever the top 2, this patch partially fixes that problem as even astral can be good.
Awesome changes, can’t wait to get my hands on them.
And I KNEW those invisible arcanes were out to get me, glad to see it’s not just paranoia.
These changes are fine I guess but I’m not going to pick it back up again till I see items that are “fun” instead of a couple boring stat increases using the same old builds.
I want to see an item that inspires me to start using some totally off the wall skills to great effect.
My absolute favorite D2 build was a Ribcracker Fury Druid. As the name implies, it completely depended on having a Ribcracker (socketed with Ist), which was an otherwise s****y weapon… to the point that it was extremely difficult to find in trade most times because people almost always just vendored them. But it was absolutely essential to that build, which when done well was damn near unstoppable.
If you’re looking for builds that are that item specific, I honestly don’t think we’re going to see those quite yet. And to be fair, the really fringe builds didn’t show up in great numbers until LoD 1.09. But this patch may open up some possibilities in that general direction. With rolls now being based on Mlvl instead of Ilvl, we should start to see better quality versions of some of the Legendaries with unique properties (depending on who drops them). As we get more and more of those, people will start using them more often, experimenting a bit, and finding different set-ups that take advantage of them.
You should also start to see less and less of “the same old builds”. This patch really does look like it will open up the build possibilities, and not just a little bit. Taking into account that you shouldn’t need to be nearly as defense-oriented as before, the number of viable skill combinations should increase greatly. Add in that many formerly useless skills have been dramatically improved (at least for most classes), and this should result in a greater number of viable builds overall.
It’s also worth noting that players need to start to loosen up a bit and move away from the tiny pool of cookie-cutter builds that are considered “the best” or “the most efficient”. As the difficulty drops a little more, that should encourage people to play around with their skill sets. When the game is a hard gear check it tends to encourage a “best build” mentality (which was there in D2, but not nearly as prevalent). That completely stifles the more oddball (and fun) builds. And yes, the item system is also a big part of this problem, I’m not denying that. I’m just suggesting that there are more possibilities than most people think, and never trying anything different doesn’t help. Simply plugging in a new item, without ever adjusting your skill set to experiment a bit, isn’t going to have great results.
There is already at least one example of the kind of item specific set-up that you’re talking about, although it’s for a follower. The Windforce Scoundrel. I know that may sound like a ridiculous example at first, but you should try one. Putting that specific weapon on that specific follower offers a unique style of gameplay. With triple-shot he procs knock-back on virtually every shot. I’ve never actually noticed it not proc, but I can’t guarantee that it doesn’t fail occasionally. It’s an off the wall combo (at least at the moment), and it works to great effect. If that kind of possibility is there on a follower, it makes sense that some will be discovered eventually for players as well, especially after the game starts to open up a bit. While we’re not to the point that you seem to be looking for, we are definitely getting closer.
they only said that affix-rolls are dependent on monster level rather than Itemlevel – that does not mean that there no longer is a random range.
(eg. itemlevel 63 weapons could roll with like 120 LOH – such a low LOH value is only possible if the weapon can roll the affix level of 3-4 level lower than the best possible affix-level ( and that does not even include the random range which is ~600-~950 for the last affix level of LOH)
maybe the affixlevel are also directly tied in with the new “Monster Power system” – maybe an act 3 inferno monster on monster power 10 has technically an Level of 73 instead of 63 – and thus it can no longer roll weak as affix level which are 2-3 level below the best possible (eg look at LOH example).
that would mean that Monster Power would directly increase the roll “luck” on all items and thus increase Item-quality without increasing the quantity of useless items – and all that without overstepping the current maximum values of the current best in slot items.
thats how I envision it and that is (IMO) the smartest solution they could approach given the circumstances (of their currenty uncreative boring itemization)
So:
“Sprint
Skill Rune – Run Like the Wind
Proc coefficient reduced from 0.2 to 0.08″
and
“Powered Armor
Armor bonus reduced from 15% to 5%”
Nerf but buff? The nerf on enchantress was huge. Now I’ll have to play with other people?
(I like to play act 1-3 solo).
The tornado nerf, sadly, was expected. I reached act 3 without using sprint, just whirlwinding. The tornadoes became mandatory on act 3, since I just couldn’t stay nearby elite packs. (Btw, I can’t stay nearby anything post Gohm).
I liked the likeable stuff. DH pets should be as durable as Gargatuan, because Zombie Dogs aren’t exactly durable after Siegebreaker (maybe with the nerf), while Gargatuan can tank Izual in MP games.
I don’t think the general repercussion of the changes will be good, since people want to see the following sentence:
“*Increased the drop chance of legendaries and set items”
As for the public test thing. I’ll read the faq before whinning better, but it seems to be a case of “no thanks, I’ll be running with my real char for gold while the patch don’t show up”.
I hope, in the end of the day, that inferno is easier to beat. (I plan to invest time on my barb, but I would like to beat inferno with every class for achievements).
Lord, I’ve wanted to love this game so much and I really appreciate how hard they’re trying to improve this game. But I finally realized that the stuff that’s keeping this game merely “good” instead of “great” will not be fixed by patches.
Call me when they’ve patched in better level structure and randomization, better sound/music, meaningful character building, and an entirely redesigned attribute/item mod system…
Thanks Blizzard!!! 1.04 is a vast improvement and 1.05 looks to be right on the mark! keep it up!! (a player who’s 900hrs and going strong)