[Benji]

Notes are up at: http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-trac...-103-now-live/

I'd copy and paste, but I want the website that put the effort in to mine the data to get the website hit.

DH Nerfs galore, time to figure out a replacement for NT T_T

Also severe nerf to all the main methods of farming (Siegebreaker, Chest farming with MF, pot breaking etc)

[nirvAnA]

Overall great changes! Lots of fixes. Some highlights

• Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses
  
• Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed. Please note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in future patch. (dafuq)
  
• Belial will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes in his final phase, increasing the number of green pools dropped across the entire encounter platform (dafuq)
  
• Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
  
• Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced
  
• The experience bar for characters at level cap on a Guest Pass account will now display 0/0 experience. If the account holder upgrades to the full game, their characters will be at 0/41000 experience towards the next level.

[EveMassacrisM]

Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced

About frickin time. The gap between damage from Act I and II is just too large.

Also, ROFL at the gem combining cost reduction.

[nirvAnA]

oh god I already swapped prowlers/adrariels/innas glory/talrasha out in anticipation of the IAS nerf with equivalent substitutes and logged out with 88k dps before server went down. server is back up and its dropped to 54k. IAS nerf is sooooooo huge. I guess the rings/amulet/boots have to go now swapping them all with crit hit chance/damage

Update: My First thoughts of 1.03

• Cyneda has become really hard to kill. I do not understand why they decided to make some bosses significantly harder but the asmo farm run is gonna be a pain, although the mobs still can be glitched in the towers. I guess Blizzard wanted to shift the attention to farming mobs and not boss runs and just quitting. I think they succeeded.
  
• Your damage to monsters isn't reduced, but your attack speed is, hence the lower dps. Expect it to drop by 30-50% depending on how IAS geared you are. I think the change is good because IAS was way OP but I feel sorry for anyone who has invested real money into buying IAS gear, its simply not fair to be left with crap items. I basically sold off nearly my entire IAS gear set and its like im playing the game in slow motion. APS cut by 40% and movement speed by half.
  
• Repair change was great too. People were just dying and corpse jumping to skip stuff or glitch mobs. It feels much more fair to be punished for dying which forces you to control your character better. 1 death = 5k repairs. Expect to pay 50k if you're in the red. It also makes "Ignores Durability Loss" a non-useless affix. In the long-term it plays an extremely important role as a sink so gold doesn't become devalued.
  
• Lowered difficulty to deal with the lowered IAS and the game is also easier. Great move imo for casuals who don't have to be super geared up to complete the game on inferno and can at least feel some "progress" by getting better items just logging in 2-3 hours a day. Monsters 3-4 shot my wizard now up from 2-3. I have 40k life though, simply because i decided to stack vitality instead of all resistances as it was so much cheaper.
  
• Huge buff for melee characters, maybe too overboard. This was the biggest difference, I've seen decently geared barbs fight 15 mins against a full pack of elites in a 3 man game that 3-4 shot us ranged. But melee classes were broken (compared to how easy DH had it) so this was a good change to buff the melee players, i think they went overboard though.
  
• I think the difficulty could have been tweaked better. They did not need to reduce it across the board so drastically, just a few mobs that 1-2 shots people and lowering the burst damage / affix combos of some packs.

Overall I still feel Blizzard is making a step in the right direction, many of the changes are going to be hugely positive in the long run - IAS overpowered, nerfing dhs who could just stack dex and nothing else, importance of the gold sink, melee being on "equal footing" again etc. Some things should have been done better but it does not deserve the out lash they are getting on the forums now. Hoping for channel / clan / pvp support in the upcoming patches.

[FSDarkNemesis]

The repair costs are killing me! I'm now down to my bare amounts of gold after dying alot in ACT 2 Inferno! I won't have enough for repairs....

[Dox]

This patch is hella broken. I logged in and my XP bar is gone. My companion has also been demoted to level 13 and cannot gain experience.

Also what's up with level 60 white items vendoring for less than 10 gold now? :/

[breadfan]

Originally Posted by Dox

Also what's up with level 60 white items vendoring for less than 10 gold now? :/

I actually really support this change. I don't like feeling obligated to pick up whites which fill my bags and make trip after trip to town to vendor them.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

Cyneda has become really hard to kill. I do not understand why they decided to make some bosses significantly harder but the asmo farm run is gonna be a pain, although the mobs still can be glitched in the towers. I guess Blizzard wanted to shift the attention to farming mobs and not boss runs and just quitting. I think they succeeded.

I think the main problem is that the hardest part of the game is champion packs, and if you can clear them and get to a boss, you just get free loot. I think it's just about addressing the balance of challenge.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

I think the difficulty could have been tweaked better. They did not need to reduce it across the board so drastically, just a few mobs that 1-2 shots people and lowering the burst damage / affix combos of some packs.

Most of the one shot mobs have like some broadcasted mechanic, where they do a massive massive swing that you have plenty of time to move from. And the mobs that one-shot you usually one-shot other mobs, so just use an enchantress?

[Dox]

Originally Posted by breadfan

I actually really support this change. I don't like feeling obligated to pick up whites which fill my bags and make trip after trip to town to vendor them.

That's a reasonable point... but I liked being given a choice between fluid convenience vs a decent boost in cash. Now that that choice has been taken away from me, I feel like an entire (minor) dimension in gameplay has been extinguished. There was something equally refreshing and frustrating about going back to town to unload an entire bag of weapons to the vendor whilst making a few thousand gold for my troubles.

Ah well.

[Asrathiel]

To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Willow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.

Awww. I like bringing them into town...

Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced

Good, I hate those things!

Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less

Yay, chasing them all around is super annoying

Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced

I wonder how much by?

[iMSystem]

Just did a Warden > Butcher run now in MF gear with 5 stacks (280%MF)

And I have to say, farming elites is where it's at.

Warden and Butcher still dropped 3 rares for me, plus a ton of magic items (From what I saw, was pretty much the same amount as previous runs) Elites were dropping at least 3 rares and saw 4 ilvl 62 items, and a lot of other junk, which is expected from Act 1 really.

Now going to farm some Act 2 goblins onto Act 2 Champions and see how much better it got ^^

[Benji]

Managed to jump on quickly before work and saw a 9k DPS drop (before SS), wasn't expecting such a harsh drop as I was only using 3 IAS peices, oh well :P

Xeen was telling me mobs no longer 1 shot, I proved him wrong very quickly in Act 2, then again I run with <100 resists.

In the end I realized DH hasn't changed that much, we will still be kiting and all that stuff with a small DPS loss, and I've been avoiding getting 1 shot until now with no issues, no reason as to why that would change.

Natalyas got stealth buffed to provide +2 disc regen a sec (up from 0.42), and some DH's are trying 4 set + Gloom builds, I might give it a go as well as I've already got the 3 expensive pieces of Natalyas. Not expecting it to work, but the extra Disc will still be nice for SS for something like ~50 dex loss.

I think me and my crew will try Inferno pony runs for loot now, get 5 stack in act 1 then jump in there and see if it's decent. Act 3 was farming was getting easy anyway.

[cruxSpoon]

Side note for wizards, they nerfed the life after kill/venom hydra healing

DPS i went from 63k to 45k (with forceweapon buff)

Killing things dont seem that hard though

Quick Comments

	breadfan:	noooo I was sure they wouldn't nerf that :(:(:(
	Cyanide:	it was a bugged, i'm glad they fixed it actually.

[mGGDrGooSe]

my DH used to at least be able to kill an elite mob with between 3-6 deaths, mostly from unavoidable insta-hits like teleport and vortex, they would just kill me before the vault or the SS activated. So far I've faced 4 different elite mobs and died 3 times to each without getting more than 10% of their health down. I think im pretty much done with this game. The game play and story arent interesting enough to make a new char and the cost/benefits isnt worth it to keep doing inferno.

[Cyanide]

Why 1.03 sucks

• Rubber banding issues fixed? I think it got worse for me, I never had an issue. But now, even with "240ms", I'm getting rubber banding on my screen. Well f*** you very much for that.
• Nerfing of Inferno as a whole. Feels a bit too easy now when mobs that previously hit for 80% only hit for about 5-10% now. I actually enjoyed the challenge of pre-1.03 inferno.
• Siegebreaker is a joke, I used to need to kite him, hit him a few times, blow a CD and face tank for a few seconds, continue kiting, avoid the charge. Now I just stand in a corner and let him hammer away at me. Reflect damage? -5 to -20 dmg per tick from my Sweeping Winds, oooh that tickles.
• Chests, destructibles and other environmental sh*t, oh and Magic Find. Seriously, you nerf all those for the lamest of reasons, you're punishing players because you cannot catch botters, shame on you Blizzard. Might as well remove ALL chests while you're at it.
• IAS Nerf. Used to have 2.34 attacks per second (i think), now I have 1.93. Fights now feel SLOW, LESS EXCITING and basically, kinda boring, because despite less DPS, I can now just face tank most things.
• Drop buff/nerf. Azmodan now drops 1 sh*tty rare compared to 3 last time with 5 stack NV. Champion packs dropping 1 guranteed? Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, I prefer my old method of farming, 10 rares for a 5 stack run to azmodan. Now, I get more rares, sure, but I'm really not sure if the quality has improved to my liking. I'm seeing a lot of ilvl 61s and below. I had more ilvl 63s last time.
• I did a run from Siegebreaker all the way through to Azmodan. I got NOTHING of value, in the process, lost about 40k in repairs. Sure I've got a crap ton of yellows, but that's exactly what they are. A crap ton of crap.

All in all, I feel LESS powerful than before even though I can face tank more things now. I kill things slower, I last longer. Why is that? Fights don't flow as well for me any more. Spirit Regen has become a problem again. IAS nerf was NEEDED, but I think they overdid it. 50% nerf was too far in the opposite direction. Inna's Glory was 15% before, now it's only 5% (oh, and it still isn't working yet). I'm very close to being done with this game to be honest.

[Benji]

I really underestimated the IAS nerf, I feel like my char is carrying around a ton of bricks, going to either have to relearn my stutter step with my new attack speed, or find 20% IAS somewhere

[ZiggyD]

Hwaygo from the Diablo Herald actually made a video of the newly added in Mink attack animations

Patch 1.0.3 Attack Animations

Patch 1.0.3 Attack Animations

Looking cool!

[ToRMaverick]

OK so I must also QQ on the IAS nerf.

For me, this nerf has totally changed the feel of the game. I dont know if "fun" is the right word, maybe that edge of your seat feeling, or just the adrenalin you got with the game. But the game is just SO SLOW. It really isnt (and for lack of the right word)... fun. It just feels bogged down like your feet are in quick sand and you cant get moving. Feels like watching a movie in slow motion with no way of changing it.

To be honest Im not worried about anything other that is this game fun to play... and the IAS nerf has definatly dropped my fun factor. For the love of god... please un-nerf this to some degree. My bow feels like the x-bow i was using ages ago which i changed out for this very slow reason.

I will persist atm, but if blizzard dont address this. Im back to SC2.

EDIT: FARK ME.... Swapped out my 2 rings with ias for crit damage cause i lost over 10k in dps... got it back to 100k but it is @#$#. And ohhh yeah, what usually cost me 7k to reapir now costs me 35k. Farming those difficult bosses vs repair costs is all about efficency!

EDIT 2: I just died a little inside after playing for a few hrs. I thought D3 would last longer but sadly the road it is on will lead to its own grave. Give it a few more weeks at most before the masses move on. Im done with it... SC2 anyone?