[Cyanide]

I thought I'd create a thread that will be updated with Blue posts, sort of like a blues tracker for the more important/good-to-know stuff. And because these are official sources, it will end speculative thoughts on how certain things work in the game.

This is just for easy referencing, or getting to know the direction that the developers want Diablo 3 to head.

Lastly, just want to say that I consolidated some of the other posts into this one, so here's a "thank you" for taking the time to write the stuff up.

+ [16/10/12 - Infernal Machine] +

Ready for a double dose of diabolical danger? In patch 1.0.5, level 60 players will be able to forge a cursed construct called the Infernal Machine, allowing them to battle "uber" versions of some of the most malevolent mischief-makers this side of New Tristram…in pairs. While the rewards for defeating these extra-bad bosses will be great, some assembly is required.
Read on to find out how to craft the Infernal Machine, where it can be used, and what epic rewards await those brave enough to unlock its secrets.

The Components

To craft the Infernal Machine, players will first need to collect four components from powerful Keywardens in each Act of Inferno:

The Key of Destruction will drop from Odeg the Keywarden in Act I - Fields of Misery
The Key of Hate will drop from Sokahr the Keywarden in Act II - Dahlgur Oasis
The Key of Terror will drop from Xah'Rith the Keywarden in Act III - Stonefort
The Infernal Machine Blacksmithing Plans will drop from Nekarat the Keywarden in Act IV - Silver Spire Level 1

More information on the bosses and rewards after the break!

+ [16/10/12 - Patch 1.0.5 Arrives Today] +

We will be performing scheduled maintenance for Diablo III starting tomorrow at 3:00 a.m. PDT in order to deploy patch 1.0.5. We anticipate that maintenance will conclude and that all services will be available by approximately 1:00 p.m. PDT.

Important: Please note that you will not be prompted to download patch 1.0.5 until the patch is live in your home region. If you are logging in from a European or Asian client, you will need to wait for this patch to release in that region before it can be installed. Additionally, if your home region is the Americas, you will be unable to log into Europe or Asia using Global Play after patch 1.0.5 is live until those regions have also patched.

For reference, here are the scheduled maintenance times for each region:

The Americas: 3:00 a.m. PDT (10/16) to 1:00 p.m. PDT (10/16)
Europe: 6:00 p.m. PDT (10/16) to 4:00 a.m. PDT (10/17)
Asia: 1:00 p.m. PDT (10/17) to 11:00 p.m. PDT (10/17)

Please note that these times are subject to change. For time zone assistance, please visit: http://everytimezone.com

+ [12/10/12 - Monster Power: More Guts, More Glory] +

The armies of the Burning Hells are about to become a lot more hellacious. In patch 1.0.5, we'll be introducing Monster Power, a new system designed to give players more control over how challenging enemies are in each difficulty setting. Similar to the "Players X" command in Diablo II, Monster Power gives Diablo III players the option to increase the health and damage of monsters according to different "power levels" -- and in return, they'll receive scaling bonuses to their adventure stats (including experience, Magic Find, and Gold Find) as well as more drops.

The option to adjust Monster Power will be available to all players starting at level 1 through the Quest Selection window, and can be adjusted separately for Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulties. Here's how the system works....

Information can be found here

This is how Monster Power scales in Inferno:

You can continue reading the rest of the blog update from the link above.

What I'm particularly happy about is this: "More power to the people"

The Power Is Yours

In Diablo III, your character's power can grow by multiple orders of magnitude, but up until now there hasn't been a way for you to truly put that potency to the test. The Monster Power system provides a new outlet for high-powered heroes to truly see how far they've come and tangibly experience just how epic the gear they've collected is.

Different players want different levels of challenge, and with Monster Power you'll be able to determine what the right level of challenge is for you. Whether you're in it for the guts, the glory, or simply the goodies, we're excited to offer players the opportunity to face the forces of evil on their own (possibly slightly insane) terms.

+ [05/10/12 - PTR Patch 1.0.5 Notes] +

PTR Patch 1.0.5 Notes

+ [25/09/12 - On WW Barbs and Nerfing in general] +

Source

Run the Like Wind makes WW/double tornado barb a very strong build by combining multiple benefits into one neat little package: life regeneration, Fury gain, damage, in-combat mobility, and run speed. It's all there. Ask just about anyone (or take a look at the posts in these forums) and they'll tell you WW barbs are incredibly powerful, and it's also one of the first builds people point to when the word "nerf" is mentioned.

I think most players -- whether they'd admit it publicly or not -- probably agree that the tornadoes left by sprinting (a skill that provides utility, huge mobility, and proc effects including Life On Hit and Into The Fray) shouldn't be so powerful in comparison to other skills that have restrictions on them. Like Hammer of the Ancients, which requires you to stand still, swing, and who's sole purpose is to deal damage. We'd like to bring the skill more in-line with other build options, and we think that from a pure design standpoint the problem is tornadoes triggering procs, most specifically Life on Hit.

The survivability you get from WW with LoH is definitely an outlier compared to other available builds. This wasn't a huge issue previously, but once we introduced Monster Power it became clear that we needed to make some adjustments. Basically, when we were doing our initial testing for 1.0.5, anything that didn't kill WW barbs in the first second of combat failed to be any sort of real threat, and that applied even after scaling Monster Power up to its higher settings. The amount of damage enemies do at higher Monster Power levels is pretty insane, and while the WW barb was still doing fine, it felt punishingly unfair to every other class and barbarian build.

This introduced another problem: if a WW barb could heal from empty to full health in half a second, then for any monster to pose a threat it would need to take you from full to dead in less than half a second. We could certainly make damage more spikey, but most players don't enjoy being insta-gibbed, and we tend to agree that going from full health to DEAD without ever seeing your health hit those intermediate values can make combat feel a little shallow. Having times when you want to play more conservatively vs. more aggressively can add depth to combat and make it more interesting, so (in general) we try to avoid creating situations where spikey damage is the norm.

So, even though we really liked the build, in the end all the data was telling us that WW needed to be changed.

Just to give you some history, when we started to troubleshoot how we could better balance Run Like Wind, we didn't want to remove the ability for tornadoes to trigger procs completely. Rather than break the build, we wanted to find ways to reduce the sheer efficiency of it without removing the fundamental mechanics that make it work. We also discussed options outside of adjusting its proc coefficient, too:

We looked at just nerfing Sprint's tornado damage, which would allow us to keep the core mechanics without the build being greatly more effective than every other build in the game, but the life regen still made the game too bursty at the higher Monster Power levels.

We also looked at reducing the run speed. But, the running speed boost is baked into Sprint, so it felt wrong to consider changing that aspect of the skill. The fact you have in-combat mobility is a fundamental property of leaving tornadoes behind as you sprint, so if we removed that aspect it'd be the same as deleting the skill from the game, and we're not interested in doing that.

The last alternative was Fury cost. You gain Fury with WW, but it comes from Battle Rage – Into the Fray. Into The Fray seems to interact just fine with other skills, which really underscores that the real issue is the tornadoes’ ability to proc effects.

After a lot of internal testing and heated debates, we ultimately decided to address the core of the issue and reduce Run Like Wind's proc coefficient, and we brought it down by a significant amount (from 0.2 to 0.08). We want to make sure whirlwinding is still viable, though, so to compensate, we also dropped down Whirlwind's Fury cost from 16 to 9. This should make it possible for players to still whirlwind continuously, but it lessens the need to have Sprint in order to use Whirlwind at all.

Of course, we're really looking forward to players jumping on the PTR, testing out the changes first-hand, and sharing their feedback. We're still working out a few kinks with the PTR client, but hopefully we can start getting that feedback pretty soon now.

+ [25/09/12 - pcgamer.com Patch 1.0.5 Interview with Jay Wilson and Wyatt Cheng] +

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.5 interview with Jay Wilson and Wyatt Cheng

You also mentioned in that entry talking with the Warcraft and StarCraft guys about the game. I’m curious to know how often this happens, and if you have any specific examples of decisions you made for Diablo based on their feedback, or decisions they made because of something you guys suggested.

Jay Wilson, Game Director: We talk a lot about each other’s projects. Like, we all play each other’s games, and especially our design culture is very cross-team oriented. So, the game directors for all the projects – we go out to lunch together once a week. We actually meet at least one other time in a more formal capacity. And that’s just to talk about games and what everybody’s doing.

I, particularly, gave a lot of feedback on the pet battles system that’s going into [World of Warcraft expansion] Mists of Pandaria. They gave us a lot of feedback on game tuning and how to handle, kind of, in-game content and reward systems.

WC: I would say that the degree of collaboration is very high. A lot of it, like Jay has alluded to, is formal, recurring meetings with the other directors … There’s also a lot of social interaction that can happen, too, informally. I get e-mails or IMs from people on the other teams, or I’ll ask them for their opinions.

We also try to open up communication a little bit. So, sometimes if I’m working on a change, I’ll cc them on an e-mail so they can kind of listen in, so to speak. And 90 percent of the time, they won’t say anything. But if they see something that seems out of line, then they’ll chime in.

I’d say that happens almost on a daily basis.

Pretty good interview giving us a look at what goes on in development.

For the full interview, head on over here

+ [21/09/12 - PTR Patch 1.0.5 Notes] +

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.

Full PTR Patch notes can be found here

+ [15/09/12 - Dev Journal: Defensive Bonuses and Monster Damage] +

Dev Journal: Defensive Bonuses and Monster Damage

We're taking a close look at defensive skills vs. incoming monster damage in 1.0.5. We’re going to be changing a few defensive skills for each class, including some direct nerfs to skills like wizard Energy Armor and barbarian War Cry - Impunity. However, we're also reducing incoming damage in Inferno, so players will actually come out ahead. In short the plan is:

1. Reduce the effectiveness of select defensive skills
2. Reduce monster damage by more than the mitigation lost by these skills
3. Putting both changes together, players actually take less damage than before

Why We're Making This Change

Why are we doing this? The reason is not complicated. High incoming monster damage combined with extremely powerful defensive skills make those skills and runes feel mandatory. Our goal is that by simultaneously nerfing defensive skills and reducing incoming damage, players who choose to continue using these defensive skills will take less damage overall, and players who choose to forego these "mandatory" skills will find themselves more survivable than what you would currently experience on live. Overall, these changes result in a huge buff in the player’s favor. Just how mandatory are these skills?

As it is now, Energy Armor is used by 83% of level 60 wizards. Also, take a look at the distribution of the War Cry skill on level 60 barbarians:

In developing Diablo III, defensive skills were made potent because we wanted to ensure they would be attractive. In some regards, we were too successful. Many players feel compelled to grab every defensive skill available to them, which can take away from some flexibility in using different build options.

This also creates problems for a class that may have less defensive skills. When one class has massive defensive buffs, abilities like Mortar, Arcane Enchanted, and Plagued can feel pretty modest, and at the same time feel overly punishing to a class without them. We’re all in favor of people being able to build their character for survivability, but there needs to be a balance.

How Much is Enough?

So the stated goal is to make sure the combination of the defensive skill nerf combined with the reduced damage from monsters still results in an overall buff to players. Let's bust out some math! As previously mentioned, Energy Armor is one of the skills being impacted. The exact change is the base armor provided by Energy Armor is being reduced from 65% to 35%, and the resistance increase provided by Prismatic Armor is being reduced from 40% to 25%.

The benefit of these skills is greater at higher levels of Armor and Resistance, so let’s assume very high numbers of each. Suppose a wizard has 6000 Armor and 800 Resist before Prismatic Armor. Assuming a level 63 enemy:

• In 1.0.4 this translates to 9900 Armor (75.86% mitigation) and 1120 Resist (78.05% mitigation) with Prismatic Armor, for a total mitigation of 94.70%
• In 1.0.5 this will be 8100 Armor (72.00% mitigation) and 1000 Resist (76.05% mitigation) with Prismatic Armor, for a total mitigation of 93.29%
• If a monster hits for 50,000 damage, then the damage taken by the wizard will go from 2650 damage to 3355 damage.
• This means incoming damage would have to be less than 79% of the current value (2650 /3355) in order for it to feel the same after 1.0.5.

Based on this it’s clear that in order to ensure 1.0.5 is a net buff for all wizards we’d have to reduce incoming monster damage by at least 21%. Prismatic Armor still provides a significant boost to survivability, but it should no longer feel mandatory, opening up other options such as a more offensively minded Storm Armor (which is getting buffed in 1.0.5).

Let’s do another example with the barbarian. War Cry Impunity is being reduced from 50% resistances to 20%.

• A barbarian with 800 resist before War Cry against a level 63 enemy translates to 1200 Resist (79.21% mitigation) with Impunity in 1.0.4
• In 1.0.5 this will be 960 Resist (75.29% mitigation) with Impunity
• If a monster hits for 20,000 damage after Armor, then the damage taken by the Barbarian will go from 4158 damage to 4942 damage
• This means incoming damage would have to be less than 84% of the current value on live (4158/4942) in order for the game to feel the same.

As it happens, we’re going to reduce all damage in Inferno by at least 25%. Players who want to be the toughest damage mitigators in the game can continue to use defensive skills and get a sizable bonus for doing so. Players who want to use other skills can do so without sacrificing such a massive amount of survivability. Class builds that don't currently use heavy mitigation skills such as Smoke Screen-focused demon hunters or Gargantuan-tanking witch doctors will find their survivability has gone up considerably due to reduced incoming monster damage.

Class by Class

+ [Barbarians] +

Barbarians:

• War Cry - Impunity: Bonus resistance reduced from 50% to 20%.
• Leap - Iron Impact: We’re adjusting the design of this skill. Rather than providing 300% armor for 4 seconds, it’s going to provide 100% armor per target hit for 3 seconds. So if you don't hit any targets, you won't get any armor. If you hit 5 targets, you'll actually get 500% armor. We are making this change because the intended fantasy of Iron Impact is a barbarian who leaps into the thick of battle and is super tough. The way the skill plays out on live it is essentially an Ignore Pain that can also move you. For the most part it is better than Ignore Pain, making not only Ignore Pain unattractive, but also the other Leap Attack runes. In 1.0.5, if you want a defensive cooldown - grab Ignore Pain. If you want to leap into the thick of battle and be super tough, take Iron Impact.

+ [Demon Hunters] +

Demon Hunters:

• In the case of the demon hunter, the class is a bit too binary. If you're playing a glass cannon Smoke Screen build, then you're invulnerable most of the time, and when you make a mistake, you die instantly. If you're using Shadow Power - Gloom with a legacy Natalya's set, then you have near constant uptime of 65% damage reduction, but if you're not using the legacy Natalya's set, Shadow Power - Gloom is a luxury.
• Independent of the general defensive skill nerf, we had already decided to buff Shadow Power to last longer. The primary purpose of Shadow Power is to give you a short window of time during which you can unload some damage to recoup some Life. Unfortunately the 3-second duration makes this awkward to use. We are changing Shadow Power from 20% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 15% Life Steal for 5 seconds. This should be a modest buff to the skill as well as making it a lot more pleasant to use. All of the runes are scheduled to see similar changes, such as Blood Moon going from 30% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 25% Life Steal for 5 seconds. Each rune effect is slightly smaller, but for 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds, resulting in an overall buff over the duration of the effect.
• Taking into account the across-the-board nerf to defensive skills, Gloom will become 35% damage reduction for 5 seconds.
• This developer journal is focused primarily on defensive skill changes, but because the change to Gloom is significant, I want to mention that we are looking at concrete mechanics changes to the demon hunter to introduce new play styles. Many players have mentioned that outside of Gloom, demon hunters seem to lack defensive options. More importantly, demon hunters would like some different play styles, and we agree! Here are a few changes we are adding for demon hunters in 1.0.5 to open up new ways to play:
• We are adjusting some runes and passives to provide ways to increase survivability that scales with your Life, Armor, and resistances.
• We are changing the Spider, Boar, and Wolf companion pets to be actual pets that can tank for you like a Gargantuan or Zombie Dog.
• We are putting a short cooldown on Sentry, but you can have two out simultaneously. On top of that, the Custom Engineering passive will let you have a third Sentry turret! This opens up a whole new play style for the Demon Hunter of establishing a "nest" that you can draw enemies into.

+ [Monk] +

Monk:

• The strongest monk defensive skill is One With Everything. We've mentioned it before and it bears repeating - this is something we would like to fix someday, but we're going to take our time. Changes to One With Everything heavily impact existing monk gear. We still plan on addressing this in the future but will do so in a way that does not invalidate the gear monks have invested in.
• Resolve: Damage reduction reduced from 25% to 20%.
• Seize the Initiative: Changed to grant 50% of your Dexterity as Armor. This will result in anywhere from 750 to 1250 armor for most monks (depending on your Dex) which is comparable to the mitigation lost by other classes. The reduction to Resolve and Seize the Initiative should mean if you want to be a “super-tanky monk” you can still take all three defensive skills, but it should be a lot easier to pick some other passives without feeling like you’re going to blow up at the first Elite pack you encounter.

+ [Witch Doctor] +

Witch Doctor:

• Jungle Fortitude is being reduced from 20% to 15% damage reduction.

+ [Wizard] +

Wizard:

• Energy Armor: Armor increase reduced from 65% to 35%.
• Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor: Resistance increase reduced from 40% to 25%.
• It’s worth noting that we’re going to provide additional alternative defensive options for the wizard such as adding flat melee damage reduction to Ice Armor and creating a Familiar variant that provides passive Life regeneration.

Why You Nerf Inferno?

Alright, so let's recap. Defensive skills are taking a hit in 1.0.5, but incoming damage from monsters is also being reduced. Taken together, the changes mean Inferno is going to be easier. For some of you this is totally cool; you welcome an easier Inferno because it’s about efficiency and not difficulty. For others, you may be skeptical but you're at least intrigued at the possibility that you'll be able to drop some defensive skills and discover some new builds. However, for others, Inferno is currently already too easy. Maybe you don't use any defensive skills; maybe your gear is so good you dropped War Cry - Impunity weeks ago. For this last group you may be wondering "Another Inferno nerf? But I crave more of a challenge, not less!"

For people in this last group, 1.0.5 is bringing the "Monster Power" system. The details of this system will be outlined as we get closer to 1.0.5, but in short this is a callback to the Diablo II ”players X” option, allowing you to increase the level of challenge for increased rewards. Our hope is that we can make Inferno easier while simultaneously providing new ways for top-end players to gauge their increasing power in tangible ways.

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III, and he’s annoyingly excited about Netrunner being re-released as a Living Card Game. It’s really starting to get on everyone’s nerves.

+ [13/09/12 - Patch 1.0.5 Sneak Peek] +

Patch 1.0.5 Sneak Peek

We’ll have articles in the coming days providing all the details on the upcoming patch, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek at what major features to expect.

Defensive Skill Changes

In our eternal quest to promote build diversity; we’ll be making changes to defensive skills across the board while simultaneously reducing incoming damage. The net result is a survivability buff for players, and an increase in build options as defensive abilities become less “mandatory.”

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.

New System: Monster Power

Similar to the “Players 8” command in Diablo II, the Monster Power system is designed to give players more control over how challenging enemies are in each difficulty.

This and more is coming in Patch 1.0.5! Stay tuned for all the gory details.

+ [06/09/12 - Developer Journal: Crowd Control Changes] +

Developer Journal: Crowd Control Changes

Shortly after Diablo III launched, I remember watching Jay play his barbarian. He was having a blast, killing monsters left and right, but something was bothering him. He was annoyed because Ground Stomp -- one of his favorite abilities -- got worse as he progressed to higher difficulty levels, and that his character felt weaker despite having better gear and more stat points.

We all agreed that the game needed to get harder at higher difficulty levels, but Jay didn't like this particular way that it was getting harder. Specifically, he didn't like that we diminished crowd control (CC) effects. We had discussed CC effects many times during development, and we felt the system we had got the job done, but Jay felt we could do better.

Before release, we'd designed the game so that CC skills would have diminished durations at higher difficulties -- for example, most CC skills have their effectiveness reduced by 65% in Hell and Inferno. Jay has never been a fan of the way Ground Stomp and other CC skills become less powerful as a result of diminishing effects, but he also knew that a system to limit CC was required to add challenge at higher difficulties. While we've wanted to improve CC for some time now, we had bigger fish to fry first (like adding the Paragon System and improving Legendary items), so we made a note to revisit CC effects in a future patch.

Why We Reduce CC

Fast forward to present day as we prepare for patch 1.0.5. Before I talk about what we're doing to buff CC skills while still allowing the game to get harder, first, let's go over some of the reasons why we diminish the effects of CC in Diablo III:

• Monsters need time to do their thing to threaten you.
• While infinite CC rotations can feel make players feel awesome, it's fleeting. If CC becomes too powerful, it can trivialize most major mechanics and the game can become boring.
• Players in co-op have the potential to synchronize CC.

Of course, there are side effects to reducing CC to increase difficulty. One of the bigger issues we've seen is that, when it comes to mitigating incoming damage, CC skills rarely hold up against other options as you progress through Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. While a skill like Ground Stomp mitigates damage, let's you control the battlefield, and is really fun to use, the duration reduction at higher difficulties is really noticeable, making the skill far less effective. Ignore Pain, on the other hand, mitigates damage by reducing how much of it you take, regardless of difficulty level. It may not be as exciting to trigger, but it's more reliable in those later levels since its power isn't diminished.

The following graphs show a few examples of how CC skills become less widely used as players progress from levels 25, 47, and 59 * (the levels you're likely to be at Act III Normal, Act III Nightmare, and Act III Hell):

It's no surprise that as the effectiveness of a CC skill starts to diminish, its relative value (especially against skills that provide self-buffs) starts to diminish as well. This can make you feel less powerful as a player, but it also starts to push people into a narrower set of builds. After all, if one skill's power depreciates over time and another skill's power doesn't, the skill that retains its power can become much more appealing.

*These graphs illustrate the general trend of how, as players level up, CC skills become less popular, while skills that provide self-buffs become more popular. We opted to not include level 60 data in these graphs because there are many builds in Inferno that use CC skills successfully (for example, Frost Nova with Critical Mass). While we think these synergy-based builds are awesome, they’re still outliers and would ultimately skew the graph data from the overall trend.

Trial and Error

Crowd controlling monsters is not only tactically valuable, but we think it's really fun, too. Our goal was to recapture that feeling in the higher difficulties. We wanted players to feel strong and heroic when using their CC skills, no matter what level they are, and we came up with a few ideas on how to accomplish that.

Idea #1: Reduce the Duration of CC effects in Co-Op Games

The first solution we came up with was to reduce the duration of CC effects in co-op games only, and allow full durations in single-player. While this would provide a great experience for solo players and help prevent the issue of infinite CC rotations in group play, the obvious downside is that CC skills would still feel weak in co-op games.

There are already a few mechanics (such as On Kill triggers) that discourage players from teaming up with their friends, and we don’t want to pile on "my CC is less effective" as yet another reason to avoid co-op. So, we tossed that idea out and went back to the drawing board.

Idea # 2: Make Diminishing Effects Not as Strong

We also discussed making all CC effects shorter from the start, but make them not diminish (this would apply for both single-player and co-op games). For example, we talked about making Ground Stomp always last for 2 seconds, even when you first get it at level 1. Sure, it's not as good at first, but at least it doesn't get worse with time.

Of course, this means that we’d have to make CC less powerful across the board. Although it solves the original problem of CC skills feeling weaker over time, it creates the new problem of "my CC skills never feel powerful," which is arguably worse.

Idea #3: Diminishing Returns

Another idea we considered was implementing diminishing returns the way World of Warcraft does. So, your first stun gets full duration, the second stun is cut in half, the third stun is cut by 75%, and for the fourth stun and beyond you get "IMMUNE."

While this works for WoW, it just doesn't seem like a good fit for Diablo III. Not only does it feel really weird to get an "IMMUNE" message, but it also puts a lot of limitations on you in co-op games when the order in which you and your teammate use CC can matter a great deal.
Let's say you have a 5 second stun and your partner has a 1.5 second stun. If you go first, the monster is stunned for 5 + 0.75 seconds = 5.75 seconds total. If your partner goes first, the monster is stunned for 1.5 + 2.5 seconds = 4 seconds total. That seems like more micromanagement than we want to place in a fast-paced action game like Diablo III.

Additionally, there are currently a few methods of CC which are already very potent. For example, certain wizard and monk builds can maintain extremely heavy CC on enemies. As we examined CC, we realized we wanted to make CC skills feel good on their own, while still allowing these dedicated builds and combinations to be successful. In effect, we want to buff the baseline usage without hurting the players who have figured out certain potent combinations (though in the big picture we are still keeping an eye on that). This was yet another reason not to adopt the WoW diminishing returns system.

As you can see, every one of the solutions we discussed had a pretty noticeable downside, and we were kind of left hanging. We went over the reasons together and Jay basically said, "I know WHY we reduce the durations, but I still don't like it. Keep working on it."

Developers, Assemble!

As we started to wrap up development for patch 1.0.4, I decided to get a fresh perspective on the situation and hit up some designers on World of Warcraft and StarCraft II. One of the great things about working at Blizzard is being able to tap the creativity of other development teams, while still being able to do what is right for the Diablo franchise. Although they work on a different game, many of the designers around the company have been playing the heck out of Diablo III, and I figured they would be able to offer me some deeper insight into what they thought worked and what didn't.

After tossing out ideas for a while, we had a small epiphany:What if we used diminishing returns, but developed a different set of rules for Diablo III?

What if monsters just never went immune? And what if, instead of reduced % durations, the durations were reduced based on the length of the CC, so that it didn’t matter which order the CC effects were applied when playing co-op?

Here's the system we arrived at:

How It Works:

• Monsters have a "CC resistance" that is stored on a per-monster basis.
• The CC resistance starts at 0%. For every 1 second CC that is applied to the monster, the monster receives 10% CC resistance.
• Monsters lose 10% of their CC resistance every second that they are not CC’d.
• Elite monster CC resistance is capped at the current reduction values already active for Elites. In other words, CC resistance on most Elite monsters is capped to:

• 35% in Normal
• 50% in Nightmare
• 65% in Hell
• 65% in Inferno

What This Means For the Player:

• From a high level, diminishing returns are applied on consecutive stuns to reduce their effectiveness.
• You will never get an "Immune" message due to diminishing returns.
• Diminishing returns on Elite monsters cap out at the same values that are currently applied to Elite reductions.

• As previous mentioned, this means that near-infinite CC strategies will still work. We're okay with these strategies remaining viable, as we love how powerful it makes players feel. (That said, we will continue to keep an eye on these strategies and may make some changes in the future if we feel it will be better for the health of the game.)

• If two players are in a co-op game, the order in which they apply their stuns doesn't generally matter, so you shouldn't feel totally "screwed over" by the other person applying their stun before yours.
• A character using only the occasional CC every 10-15 seconds will always get the full duration in all difficulty levels.

A Free Demonstration

Let's provide some examples to show how this new system can play out in real scenarios.

+ [Example 1:] +

1. A wizard freezes an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty for three seconds using Frost Nova. The monster is frozen for the full 3 seconds and now has 30% CC resistance (+10% resistance per second for 3 seconds = 30% CC resistance).
2. The moment the freeze ends, a witch doctor casts Horrify which fears the monster for 4 seconds. Since the monster has 30% CC resistance, it’s actually only feared for 2.8 seconds (4 seconds * 70% CC effectiveness = 2.8 seconds). The monster now has 58% CC resistance (30% from the first 3 second freeze + 28% from the 2.8 second fear).
3. After 5.8 seconds (freeze + fear duration), the monster is no longer CC’d. Suppose nothing happens for 5 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 50% of its CC resistance and is now at 8% CC resistance (58% - 50% = 8% CC resistance).
4. A monk casts Blinding Flash, applying a 3 second blind. The monster is blinded for 2.76 seconds (8% CC resistance off of 3 seconds) and the monster now has 35.6% CC resistance (which we could round off as necessary).

+ [Example 2:] +

1. A monk with the Pandemonium rune is in Nightmare difficulty and casts Seven-Sided Strike on a single enemy, resulting in a lot of possible 7-second stuns.
2. The first hit stuns the monster and lasts for a full 7 seconds, but adds 70% CC resistance.
3. The second hit also successfully stuns the monster, and lands 0.4 seconds later after the first hit. The 70% CC resistance is lowered to 50% because the game is currently on Nightmare difficulty, and Nightmare difficulty has a CC resistance cap of 50% -- so the stun is 3.5 seconds long. The 3.5-second stun gets applied, even though it is fully redundant with the existing 7-second stun. Since the new stun is shorter than the amount of time left on the current stun, no additional CC resistance is added. In effect, this second stun has no effect at all..

+ [Example 3:] +

1. A party of four monks attempts to stun-lock an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty. They are all using Blinding Flash with the Self-Reflection rune, which blinds an enemy for 4 seconds.
2. The first monk casts Blinding Flash and the monster is blinded for 4 seconds. It also now has 40% CC resistance.
3. The second monk also casts Blinding Flash, but times it to land the instant the first one ends. It lasts 2.4 seconds and increases the CC resistance to 64%.
4. Both blinds wear off 6.4 seconds later. The third monk lands his Blinding Flash immediately afterwards, which lasts 1.44 seconds. This increases the monster’s CC resistance to 78.4%.
5. It's now been 7.84 seconds, and the fourth monk wants in on the action. She uses her Blinding Flash. Even though the monster’s CC resistance is technically at 78.4% by now, it's capped at 65% because of the CC resistance caps in Inferno. So, the 4 second blind actually lasts for 1.4 seconds. This adds another 14% CC resistance, bringing the final to 92.4%. (The effective resistance is still at the 65% cap, but the 92.4% is tracked under the hood for the stun resistance to wear off.)
6. The poor monster has now been blinded for a total of 9.24 seconds, and the monks are out of Blinding Flashes.
7. The next blind will occur when the first monk’s Blinding Flash comes off cooldown. Since Blinding Flash has a 15 second cooldown, and only 9.24 seconds have passed, the party has to wait for another 5.76 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 57.6% CC resistance, leaving it at 34.8%.
8. The first monk uses his Blinding Flash as soon as it comes off cooldown. The 4 second blind is reduced to 2.61 seconds thanks to 34.8% CC resistance, and the monster’s CC resistance goes up another 26.1% to 60.9%.

+ [Example 4:] +

Scenario 1

• Player 1 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 1 second. Monster has 10% CC resistance.
• Player 2 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 5.4 seconds. Monster now has 64% CC resistance.

Scenario 2

• Player 1 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 6 seconds. Monster now has 60% CC resistance.
• Player 2 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 0.4 seconds. Monster now has 64% CC resistance.

(Scenario 1 & 2 demonstrate that this system allows consecutively chained CC effects to be applied in any order. In other words, the math is commutative.)

We feel these changes should make CC abilities much more appealing (especially in those later difficulty levels), and are currently targeting them to go out with patch 1.0.5. While that patch is still a ways away, we encourage you to experiment with the math in the meantime, ask us any questions you may have about how the new diminishing returns system will work, and share your feedback!

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. His favorite Iron Chef is Hiroyuki Sakai. A la cuisine!

+ [01/09/12 - Trail of Cinders and +X% Elemental Damage explained] +

Upcoming changes for Trail of Cinders

+ [Trail of Cinders] +

In patch 1.0.5, we will be fixing a bug with Trail of Cinders that is causing the rune to deal five times more damage than intended. As a result of this fix, the amount of damage done by Trail of Cinders will be reduced from its current value (1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds) to the value we originally designed for 1.0.4, which is 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds. While this bug was discovered very quickly after 1.0.4 released and is capable of being hotfixed, we didn't want to move forward with the fix without giving players proper notice. We also know that players are having fun using Trail of Cinders in their builds, so -- although this is an important issue we want to address -- we're opting to wait for the next client patch to make any adjustments.

We recognize that some builds which currently use Trail of Cinders will no longer be viable once this bug is fixed. Ultimately, we want to continue to provide players with more build options and ways to feel creative with their skill/gear selections, but not at the expense of going against our design goals or creating situations which can encourage players to limit themselves defensively.

Discipline-based skills were never intended to trump Hatred-based skills when it comes to dealing damage. Instead, Discipline should be something you build up and save to use defensively, or to provide utility in addition to dealing damage. Allowing Trail of Cinders to remain in its current form goes against this philosophy, and in addition creates risky scenarios for players (after all, if you’re incentivized to spend all your Discipline doing damage, it won’t be available when you need it to keep yourself alive with skills like Smoke Screen or Shadow Power).

We don't yet have a date for when 1.0.5 will be released, but we'll provide more information as the development process continues. We'll also update this thread with a reminder once we're close to releasing the patch.

+X% Elemental Damage Affix Explained

+ [+x% Elemental Damage Affix] +

The "+x% Elemental Damage" affix works by adding "x%" of your physical damage to your attack, in the form of the damage type listed.

So, really basic example:
Your physical damage is 100, and the item adds +3% Fire damage.
You gain 3 extra damage to your attacks as Fire damage.


Things this takes into account:
Rings, mojos, orbs (etc) that have an "X-Y" damage affix (e.g. "1-2 Damage")
The base damage range of your weapon, before any elemental damage is added from the affix
+Min or +Max affixes on weapons

(Note: It doesn't benefit from "+X-Y Elemental Damage" affixes on weapons.)

We realize the current wording for this affix can be confusing, and it's something we'd like to make more clear in the future. If you have any suggestions for how this affix could be better worded, we're definitely interested in your suggestions. Just keep in mind that space is limited in item tooltips, and that whatever we use would need to be translated into all of our supported languages.

+ [21/08/12 - 1.0.4 Patch Notes] +

1.0.4 Patch Notes

GENERAL

+ Show +

• New System added: Paragon Levels

• After a player reaches level 60, killing monsters and completing combat challenge streaks (Killing Blow, Massacre, etc) will begin to award experience towards Paragon levels
• There are 100 Paragon levels
• Every Paragon level will reward you with:

• Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you'd gain from a normal level
• 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find

• In addition, a distinctive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown.

• Pets with passive life regeneration (most notably Followers, Zombie Dogs, and Gargantuans) have had their life regeneration greatly increased from levels 30-60
• Nephalem Valor now grants +15% Bonus Experience per stack, as well as +15% to Magic Find and Gold Find
• Magic Find will now cap at 300% (Nephalem Valor bonuses will still stack beyond this cap)
• Magic Find is no longer averaged among all players in a multiplayer game
• Players can now disable or enable music in the Sound Options
• Additional Sound Options including Sound Output and Speaker Setup has been added
• A new tutorial about "Elective Mode" will now appear when a player enters Nightmare, Hell, or Inferno difficulty for the first time

ACHIEVEMENTS

+ Show +

Bug Fixes

• The achievement "Espionage" can now be completed as the Battlefield Reports lore can now drop in Act III
• The achievement "A Unique Collection" can now be completed (see the Bug Fixes in the Monsters section for more information)
• The "Kill Diablo" criteria for the achievement "Death From Afar" has been removed

AUCTION HOUSE

+ Show +

• Auctions can now be cancelled at any point so long as they do not have any active bids
• Number of "Preferred Stats" allowed per search increased from 3 to 6
• Number of digits allowed in the "Min Value" field for equipment searches increased from 3 to 5
• "Minimum Damage" has been replaced with "Average Damage" as a searchable stat

• Bonus damage is calculated as the Average Damage: (Min Damage + Max Damage) / 2
• For example, searching for a Bonus Damage of 12 will find an item with 10-14 damage, 12 minimum damage, or 24 maximum damage

• Stat increases which come from slotted gems are no longer taken into account when searching for equipment
• Armor, DPS, Buyout, and Time Left columns are now sortable in the Search tab
• The maximum stack size of gold per listing has been increased from 100,000 to 1,000,000
• The following message has been added to the Item Purchase screen: "Item properties and values may change over time due to game balancing"
• Description text has been added or improved for several error messages

UI Improvements

• Tooltips have been added for items in the Completed tab
• Tooltips have been added for commodities
• Item Compare tooltips have been added to the Recommended Items page
• The listing price of unsold and cancelled auctions will now display in the Completed tab
• The Auctions tab and Completed tab will now refresh when a player’s item has been purchased

Bug Fixes

• Auction house search filters are now no longer case sensitive
• Players can now search for stats on Legendary items
• "Attack Speed" is now a searchable affix for quivers
• "Chance to Blind on Hit" is now a searchable affix for amulets
• Items with the "Level Requirement Reduced" affix will now properly appear in search results when specifying the level range
• Searches will now properly filter results according to the set Minimum and Maximum values for "Life per Spirit Spent"
• Witch doctor’s Corpse Spider bonus is now listed when searching for mojos
• The Recommended Items page will now display quivers for demon hunters even if the player has a two-handed ranged weapon equipped

BATTLE.NET

+ Show +

• The "Report Spam" option is now available in the main menu when right-clicking on a player's name (rather than being hidden in the "Report" sub-menu)
• Reporting another player for chat spam using "Report Spam" option will now also temporarily mute that player for the duration of your login session
• Reporting another player for friend request spam using the "Report Spam" option in the Friends List will now also automatically decline that player’s friend request
• The Quick Join window has been improved
• More information about Global Play (and its restrictions) has been added to the Account tab
• The game will now display both on the login and character select screen which region a player is currently logging into

Chat

• Clicking on achievement toasts will now provide more information about the achievement
• The Public chat menu will now indicate which channels a player has already joined
• /who and /invite commands can now be used in all channels
• "DND" and "AFK" tags have been added to the "You are now Busy" and "You are now Away" status messages (respectively)
• Shift-left-clicking on a player’s name will now display the following information: [Name]: [Level][Mode][Class] – [Act (difficulty)] (i.e. "[Pixie]: Level 45 Hardcore Barbarian – Act I (Nightmare)")
• Chat Channel and Party message formatting has been updated

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused items from the Normal gold auction house to display in the Hardcore gold auction house when a player switched between characters during periods of high latency
• The chat commands /p and /party now work correctly when joining Public Games
• Fixed a crash that could occur when clicking on a link to a fake item that contained more sockets than is possible

BOSSES

+ Show +

• Boss rooms have been standardized so that, after the boss fight is complete, players will always be able to do the following:

• Use Town Portal to leave the room
• Re-enter the room again via Town Portal as well as the room's entrance portal

Maghda

• Abilities

• Insect Swarm

• Projectiles can now be slowed

Ghom

• Abilities

• Breath Attack

• Pets and Followers should now only take 10% damage from the breath attack

• Gas Cloud

• The rate at which Ghom spawns Gas Clouds has been reduced by approximately 20%
• The cooldown on Ghom's Gas Cloud attack has been increased from 6-10 seconds to 10-13 seconds
• Pets and Followers should now only take 5% damage from Gas Clouds

• Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where certain movement skills were granting immunity to Ghom's gas clouds if cast while inside the cloud (and if the player never left the cloud’s area of effect)

Cydaea

• Bug Fixes

• Players can no longer bypass the chains that appear during the "Heart of Sin: Kill the Daughters" event
  

Azmodan

• Abilities

• Fire Ball

• Projectiles can now be slowed

Izual

• Bug Fixes

• Skipping Izual's cut-scene should no longer cause players to become trapped behind his ice barrier
• Fixed a bug where Izual’s Charge attack would not do any damage
• Fixed a bug where Izual’s Charge attack could damage players twice
• Fixed a bug where Izual could become immune to damage when at 30% health under rare circumstances

Rakanoth

• Bug Fixes

• Rakanoth is now properly immune to crowd control effects when enraged in Inferno difficulty

Diablo

• Bug Fixes

• Diablo's Bone Cage debuff will now be properly removed from the player during a phase transition if the cut-scene is skipped
• Fixed an issue where triggering a phase transition while grasped by Diablo could cause both the player and Diablo to become temporarily invisible
• Fixed an issue that caused Diablo to not summon Shadow Clones of the player if Seven-Sided Strike was cast at the appropriate time

CRAFTING

+ Show +

• A repair tab has been added to the Blacksmith

Bug Fixes

• Gem-combine designs for Amethysts and Emeralds should no longer contain typos

FOLLOWERS

+ Show +

• The last follower a player had active in a single-player game will now be restored automatically after leaving a multiplayer game
• The frequency of follower dialog has been reduced

ITEMS

+ Show +

• All level 60- 62 damage affixes have had their Minimum and Maximum top-end damage values increased

• Level 63 items will still roll the highest potential damage values in the game, but the damage difference between level 60-62 items and level 63 items just won’t be as dramatic as it was before
• Note: This will only impact items created or dropped after patch 1.0.4

• Two-handed melee weapons have made more viable:

• Two-handed melee weapons can now roll their own affixes for core stats as well as higher damage values (as compared to one-handed melee weapons)

• Core stat values have been increased by approximately 70%
• Note: This does not affect two-handed ranged weapons

• Additional affix changes for two-handed melee weapons include:

• + Crit Damage, Life on Hit, Life After Each Kill, and Life Steal values can now roll up to 200%
• Note: This does not affect two-handed ranged weapons

• Note: These changes will only impact items created or dropped after patch 1.0.4

• All off-hand items (mojos, orbs, quivers, shields) can now roll Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in the same ranges as Armor and Weapons

• Note: This will only affect off-hand items created or dropped after patch 1.0.4

• Off-hands can now roll Reduced Level Requirement
• Drop rate on quivers has been reduced
• +MaxFury and +MaxSpirit will no longer roll on ranged weapons
• Max Block amount on shields with an item level of 59 and higher has been changed so they all provide the same amount of Max Block
• Repair costs have been reduced by up to 25% for item levels between 53 and 63
• Weapon racks have had their weapon drop rate restored to 100%, though weapons are more likely be of Common quality (white or grey items)
• Destructible objects now have a chance to drop items again
• The text color of gems, potions, crafting pages and tomes dropped on the ground has been changed from white to light blue
• The maximum stack size of gems has been increased from 30 to 100
• The gem drop sound effect is now more noticeable

Legendary Items

• Significant changes have been made to Legendary items:

• Custom proc effects have been added to over 50 Legendary items and Set item bonuses
• All Legendary items will now roll with at least one of the following affixes to ensure that their DPS is viable: +Elemental Damage, +Attack Speed, +Critical Damage, +%damage, Has Sockets
• Affix values on Legendary items are no longer demoted and will now roll at their maximum potential
• Many lower level Legendary items have had their affix count increased to 6
• Legendary items based on Uniques from previous Diablo games have received a tuning pass to make their stats more reflective of their ancestors
• The chance for a Legendary item to drop that's below an item level of 50 has been increased
• Item level 63 Legendary items have been added to the game
• Legendary Sets:

• All item level 61 set pieces have been increased to item level 63 (excluding rings and amulets), and had their base item changed from late Hell/early Inferno to late Inferno
• Class-specific sets are now guaranteed to have the class’s core stat on every item in the set

• Summoned Creatures:

• Creatures summoned by Legendary item procs should now follow the player or Follower with the item equipped
• Creatures summoned by Legendary item procs should now have combat awareness similar to Followers
• Creatures summoned by Legendary item procs should now their level determined by the Legendary item level

• Please note that these changes will only apply to new Legendary items that drop or are created after patch 1.0.4. Legendary items which dropped or were created prior to patch 1.0.4 will remain unchanged (this also applies to items which have not been identified yet). To distinguish these items from one another, new Legendary items will have slightly different names and appearances from those dropped or created prior to 1.0.4.

Vendors

• Squirt the Peddler has permanently moved from the Caldeum Bazaar up to the Hidden Camp, as she heard people liked buying Health Potions up there

Bug Fixes

• Legendary items (pre- and post-1.0.4) with the +Attack Speed affix should now work correctly
• Items with +Chance to Stun on Hit now have the suffix "of Staggering" instead of "of Devastation"
• Multiple chests that had a small chance of dropping loot into unreachable locations have been repositioned slightly to prevent this from happening
• Fixed a bug where Normal chests found in Bastion keep were dropping items from too low of a treasure class (these chests will now drop the same class of items as other Normal chests throughout the game)
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to see properties of unidentified items

MONSTERS

+ Show +

• Monsters across the game have had a pass to make their experience and loot rewards more proportional to the effort required to kill them

• For example, Imps and Tormented Stingers grant less XP and drop less items, but Lacuni Warriors grant increased XP and drop more items

• Experience awarded by level 61-63 monsters has been increased by approximately 60%
• Normal monsters should now drop Magic (blue) items and Rare (yellow) items approximately 4 times more than before
• Bonus health granted to monsters in co-op games has been reduced to 75% per additional player for all difficulties:

• Normal: (no change)
• Nightmare: 85% → 75%
• Hell: 95% → 75%
• Inferno: 105% → 75%

• Monster damage and health and drop rates has been adjusted for Inferno as follows:

• Normal monsters now have a greatly increased chance to drop Magic (blue) and Rare (yellow) items
• Act I

• Elite monster health reduced by 11%

• Act II

• Normal monster health increased by 4%
• Elite monster health reduced by 8%
• Overall damage done by all monsters reduced by 8%

• Act III and Act IV

• Normal monster health increased by 10%
• Elite monster health reduced by 2.5%
• Overall damage done by all monsters reduced by 15%

• Spine Hewer, Skeletal Reaper, Skull Cleaver, and Swift Skull Cleaver damage has been reduced by approximately 37%
• Sarkoth <Hoarder of Treasure> has had his loot quality and health adjusted slightly
• Quill Fiends in the Dank Cellar will now drop less additional gold (but will still drop more than other Quill Fiends) and should now properly turn hostile when confronted by a player
• Blood Clan Ranged monsters should now run away less often and for shorter distances
• Moon Clan Ranged monsters should now run away for shorter distances
• Snakeman Casters now have a melee attack
• Snakeman Casters' Electric Burst now has a max channeling duration of 7 seconds
• Rockworms should now burrow less frequently after unburrowing, and will unburrow more quickly after burrowing
• Succubus blood star projectiles can now be slowed
• Brickhouse monsters (e.g. Demonic Tremors) should now Arm Shields and enrage less often, and will no longer gain an increase in damage while enraged
• Possessed monsters can no longer spawn with the Illusionist affix
• Fast mummies (Betrayed, Accursed, and Reviled) can no longer spawn with the Illusionist affix
• Pets and Followers should now only take 10% damage from a Fast mummy's Poison Death Cloud
• Heralds of Pestilence no longer attack pets and Followers
• The first and third levels of Leoric’s Dungeon now have a total of five Uniques that can be spawned
• Reduced the chance of a skeletal Rare pack to spawn in the Cemetery of the Forsaken from 50% to 20%
• The lone Champion Shaman in the Demonic Trebuchet is no longer considered a Champion
• The treasure goblin spawn has been removed from the Road to Alcarnus

Champions and Rares

• Champion and Rare monsters will no longer enrage after prolonged combat, and they will no longer heal to full health after not being engaged
• Jailer can now no longer appear with Knockback, Nightmarish, or Vortex
• Invulnerable Minions has been removed as a possible affix
• Fire Chains damage has been reduced by 20%
• Nightmarish monsters will now make players immune to Fear for 6 seconds after the Fear is cast on the player
• Plagued, Frozen, and Mortar monsters will now do only 10% of their damage to pets and Followers
• Shielding monsters will no longer shield if they are the last monster left in the area, and only one monster in a given pack can be shielded at a time
• The spawn points of Arcane Enchanted beams have been adjusted slightly to be more spread out, and their damage has been reduced by approximately 30%
• Champion and Rare Fallen Lunatics have been removed from both Zoltun Kulle dungeons
• Swarm monsters now have a more pronounced Champion and Rare appearance

Bug Fixes

• Mortar monster projectiles should no longer be aimed within the monster's dead zone
• Waller monsters can no longer spawn walls on top of players
• Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified minions no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, or Lightning damage (respectively)
• Dark Moon Shaman Champions and Rares now correctly show their affixes
• Dark Moon Shaman’s Empower ability will now properly reduces all types of incoming damage
• Oppressors' Charge attack will no longer deal damage to players twice
• Berserkers now have the proper "blue glow" of Champions
• The Champion pack at the end of Kyr the Weaponsmith's event "A Reputation Restored" will now drop loot and give experience
• The common and Champion skeletons that spawn from the treasure chest during the zombie ambush event in Act I, Cathedral level 4 will now drop loot and give experience
• The Goatman Ambush event in the Fields of Misery will now properly spawn a full pack of Champions (instead of just one Champion)
• The Aspect of Terror will now drop at least one Magic (blue) item, and its clones will now only drop health globes
• The Flying Molok can no longer turn invisible and become un-targetable
• The Bloated Malachor’s damage has been normalized to be in line with the rest of his other monster variants
• Killing Sardar's illusions will no longer trigger quest completion for "Sardar’s Treasure: Kill Sardar"; the quest will now properly complete when Sardar is slain (this is because Sardar is no longer an Illusionist, and will now only spawn with Vampiric and Nightmarish affixes)
• It should now be significantly easier to dodge Triune Berserker Power Hits
• Damage over time spells will no longer prevent certain monsters from dropping health globes
• A player who is killed by a monster's Reflect Damage affix will now be able to release his or her corpse and be resurrected by other players
• Fixed a bug that allowed monsters with multiple affix powers to sometimes to ignore the cooldown timers of those powers
• Fixed a bug where several Unique monsters could not spawn in Act II – The Howling Plateau (this fix now allows players to finish the achievement “A Unique Collection”)

QUESTS

+ Show +

• Players will now receive full experience and gold rewards for completing quests for the first time in Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulties
• Players will no longer receive a quest reward after opening the entrance to the Waterlogged Passage; instead, they will now receive the reward after completing the step "Kill Gavin the Thief" instead (which occurs slightly after)

Bug Fixes

• The Quest Select window will now always display the most recently completed quest or quest step, as well as all resumable steps leading up to that point
• "Trailing the Coven: Talk to Karyna" will now automatically update for players to "Trailing the Coven: Find the Khazra Staff" (even if they have not yet talked to Karyna) when triggering the Lost Wagon scene

• This is to ensure that players are able to receive a quest reward when clicking on the wagon

• Players no longer receive Town Portal as a reward during repeated completions of the quest "A Shattered Crown: Take the Skeleton King's crown from the Chancellor's Altar" and will now receive gold and experience
• Players can no longer disrupt the rituals during "The Crumbling Tower: Explore the Lyceum," which used to prevent players from completing the event
• Vendel the Armorsmith can no longer be killed by the environment during the event "The Scavenged Scabbard"
• Skipping the cut-scene during the quest "A Royal Audience: Talk to Emperor Hakan II" as quickly as possible will no longer prevent the quest objective from being updated
• The matchmaking cut-off point for the quest “The Light of Hope” has been adjusted slightly

USER INTERFACE

+ Show +

• The ability to drag-and-drop skills in Elective Mode will now only be enabled while the Skill window is open
• Resist values are now taken into consideration when calculating the item comparison "Protection" value
• When a player cancels out of a Trade window, any items that are under the player's cursor will also be cancelled
• A two-second delay will now occur when clicking "Accept" in a Trade window if either player makes any changes to their offering

Bug Fixes

• Holding CTRL while mousing over an item on the ground that has socketed gems will no longer cause that item to appear unsocketed
• Players will no longer get disconnected from the game if their Mouse Wheel is bound to the function "Close All Open Windows"

MAC

+ Show +

• Retina Displays are now fully supported
• Game resolutions which match Mac screen aspect ratios now offered
• Switching between Windowed and Fullscreen modes is now faster
• Added a "Help" menu so players can more quickly navigate to relevant support pages
• Added a menu item which allows players to copy system information to their Clipboard
• Added a menu item to reveal various games files and folders in Finder

Bug Fixes

• Selecting the default resolution settings in Video Options will now correctly reset the resolution
• Changing the resolution settings while in Windowed (Fullscreen) mode will now properly change the resolution

BUG FIXES

+ Show +

• Level 60 characters will no longer receive a "+XP" message when looting a new lore journal
• Decreased the chance for multiple Sigil rooms in the Gardens of Hope (Tier 2) to spawn at once
• Fixed a bug that was causing some tiles in the Holy Sanctum not to spawn, preventing players from being able to access the room's treasure chest

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

Quick Comments

	ZiggyD:	Admirable effort!
	Nemo:	Thanks Cyanide

[Cyanide]

CONTINUED FROM OP

+ [21/08/12 - 1.0.4 Patch Notes: Class Changes] +

1.0.4 Patch Notes: Class Changes

CLASSES

Barbarian

+ Show +

• Active Skills

• Ancient Spear

• Now also roots the target in place for 1.5. seconds
• Will now default to Basic Attack if on cooldown

• Bash

• Fury generated increased from 6 to 8
• Weapon damage increased from 150% to 165%
• Skill Rune - Onslaught

• Weapon damage increased from 22% to 25% per reverberation

• Skill Rune - Punish

• Bonus damage per stack increased from 6% to 8%

• Skill Rune - Instigation

• Bonus Fury generated reduced from 6 to 4

• Cleave

• Weapon damage increased from 120% to 140%
• Skill Rune - Reaping Swing

• Proc coefficient increased from 0.667 to 0.8

• Skill Rune - Broad Sweep

• Weapon damage increased from 156% to 175%
• Proc coefficient increased from 0.5 to 0.8

• Skill Rune - Gathering Storm

• Proc coefficient increased from 0.5 to 0.8

• Hammer of the Ancients

• Weapon damage increased from 200% to 325%
• Skill Rune - Rolling Thunder

• Weapon damage increased from 155% to 275%

• Skill Rune - Smash

• Weapon damage increased from 270% to 406%

• Skill Rune - The Devil's Anvil

• Proc coefficient reduced from 1 to 0.08

• Leap

• Can now be used while immobilized by crowd control effects (such as Jailer)

• Note: Leap will not break CC effects, but that it can still be used while under the effect

• Overpower

• Skill Rune - Crushing Advance

• Can no longer trigger On Hit procs
• Amount of damage reflected increased from 30% to 35%

• Rend

• Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds
• Skill Rune - Lacerate

• Weapon damage increased from 271% over 3 seconds to 903% over 5 seconds

• Skill Rune - Bloodbath

• Weapon damage increased from 60% over 3 seconds to 100% over 5 seconds

• Seismic Slam

• Weapon damage increased from 155% to 240%
• Skill Rune - Shattered Ground

• Weapon damage increased from 202% to 288%

• Skill Rune - Cracking Rift

• Weapon damage increased from 255% to 340%

• Weapon Throw

• Weapon damage increased from 100% to 130%
• Will now default to Basic Attack if the player runs out of Fury
• Skill Rune - Mighty Throw

• Weapon damage increased 130% to 169%

• Whirlwind

• Weapon damage increased from 110% to 145%
• Skill Rune - Volcanic Eruption

• Weapon damage increased from 143% to 188%

Demon Hunter

+ Show +

• Active Skills

• Bola Shot

• Weapon damage to the primary target increased from 130% to 160%
• Skill Rune - Thunder Ball

• Weapon damage increased from 130% to 160%

• Skill Rune - Acid Strike

• Weapon damage of each bola increased from 130% to 160%

• Skill Rune - Imminent Doom

• Weapon damage to the primary target increased from 182% to 216%

• Caltrops

• Skill Rune - Jagged Spikes

• Can no longer trigger procs

• Chakram

• Weapon damage increased from 150% to 170%
• Skill Rune - Twin Chakrams

• Weapon damage increased from 100% to 114%

• Skill Rune - Serpentine

• Weapon damage increased from 203% to 230%

• Skill Rune - Razor Disk

• Weapon damage increased from 165% to 187%

• Skill Rune - Boomerang

• Weapon damage increased from 188% to 230%

• Skill Rune - Shuriken Cloud

• Weapon damage increased from 30% to 34%
• Proc coefficient reduced from 0.333 to 0.125

• Cluster Arrow

• Initial bomb weapon damage increased from 200% to 225%
• Skill Rune - Maelstrom

• Weapon damage increased from 145% to 165%

• Skill Rune - Loaded for Bear

• Weapon damage increased from 290% to 304%

• Entangling Shot

• Weapon damage of base skill and all rune variants increased from 75% to 90%
• Skill Rune - Shock Collar

• Now deals an additional 70% weapon damage over 2 seconds
• Weapon damage % is no longer based on attack speed

• Evasive Fire

• Weapon damage increased from 125% to 130%
• Skill Rune - Covering Fire

• Weapon damage increased from 125% to 130% weapon

• Grenades

• Skill Rune - Gas Grenades

• Proc coefficient reduced from 0.5 to 0.165

• Impale

• Weapon damage increased from 250% to 265%
• Skill Rune - Chemical Burn

• Weapon damage increased from 125% to 220%

• Multishot

• Hatred cost lowered from 40 to 30
• Skill Rune - Fire at Will

• Now reduces Hatred cost to 15

• Rain of Vengeance

• Changed from 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds to 715% weapon damage over 5 seconds
• Skill Rune - Dark Cloud

• Changed from 34% weapon damage for 12 seconds to 792% weapon damage over 12 seconds
• Can now find targets in a larger radius around the player

• Skill Rune - Beastly Bombs

• Weapon damage increased from 125% to 245% per bomb

• Skill Rune - Stampede

• Weapon damage increased from 75% to 120% per strike

• Skill Rune - Anathema

• Changed from 115% weapon damage for 10 seconds to 3300% weapon damage over 15 seconds

• Skill Rune - Flying Strike

• Weapon damage increased from 60% to 100%

• Rapid Fire

• Weapon damage increased from 228% to 276%
• Skill Rune - Bombardment

• Weapon damage increased from 276% to 345%

• Sentry

• Turret weapon damage increased from 20% to 55%
• Skill Rune - Chain of Torment

• Maximum tether length increased to 45 yards
• Weapon damage increased from 48% to 80%

• Smoke Screen

• Skill Rune - Choking Gas

• Now does 700% weapon damage over 5 seconds
• Weapon damage % is no longer based on attack speed

• Strafe

• Weapon damage increased from 120% to 156%
• Skill Rune - Demolition

• Weapon damage increased from 144% to 187%

• Vault

• Skill Rune - Action Shot

• Will now always shoot 4 arrows

• Skill Rune - Trail of Cinders

• Now leaves a trail of fire behind the player dealing 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds

• Passive Skills

• Brooding

• No longer requires player to not be damaged for 3 seconds to regenerate 1% of maximum Life per second

• Bug Fixes

• Rain of Vengeance

• Skill Rune - Anathema

• Shadow Beast should now drop the appropriate amount of grenades

Monk

+ Show +

• Active Skills

• Crippling Wave

• Spirit generated increased from 6 to 7

• Cyclone Strike

• Proc coefficient increased from 0 to 0.125

• Dashing Strike

• Weapon damage increased from 100% to 160%

• Exploding Palm

• Changed from 220% weapon damage over 3 seconds to 745% weapon damage over 9 seconds
• Skill Rune - Impending Doom

• Duration increased from 6 seconds to 15 seconds.

• Lashing Tail Kick

• Weapon damage increased from 200% to 235% (this also benefits Sweeping Armada, Scorpion Sting, and Hand of Ytar)
• Skill Rune - Vulture Claw Kick

• Weapon damage increased from 220% to 258%

• Skill Rune - Spinning Flame Kick

• Weapon damage increased 240% to 294%

• Mystic Ally

• Can no longer trigger procs

• Seven-Sided Strike

• Weapon damage increased from 777% to 1777% over 7 hits
• Skill Rune - Sudden Assault

• Weapon damage increased from 1007%to 2309% over 7 hits

• Skill Rune - Several-Sided Strike

• The 2 extra hits now also increase the total duration of the spell (which increases the amount of time that you are invulnerable)

• Skill Rune - Fulminating Onslaught

• Weapon damage of each explosion increased from 111% to 254%

• Sweeping Wind

• Skill Rune - Master of Wind

• Increased the duration of the vortex from 10 to 20 seconds

• Tempest Rush

• Weapon damage increased from 50% to 85%

• Wave of Light

• Weapon damage of initial strike increased from 215% to 390%
• Skill Rune - Wall of Light

• Weapon damage bonus to initial strike increased from 312% to 566%

• Skill Rune - Explosive Light

• Weapon damage increased from 285% to 430%

• Skill Rune - Pillar of the Ancients

• Weapon damage on both the initial strike and delayed explosion increased from 210% to 280%

• Way of the Hundred Fists

• Spirit generated increased from 6 to 8
• Skill Rune - Fists of Fury

• Now does 100% weapon damage over 5 seconds

• Passive Skills

• Exalted Soul

• Now also generates 1 Spirit per second

• Fleet Footed

• Movement speed bonus no longer counts toward the 25% movement speed increase cap

• The Guardian's Path

• Two-handed weapon Spirit generation bonus increased from 25% to 35%

• Bug Fixes

• Exploding Palm

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to gain multiple rare item drops from a single Champion or Rare pack by killing all remaining monsters in the pack at the same time using Exploding Palm

• Mystic Ally

• All Mystic Ally variants are now summoned with full health

• Wave of Light

• Fixed an issue that was causing enemies affected by Wave of Light to not always receive the full damage

Witch Doctor

+ Show +

• General

• Base Mana regeneration increased from 20 per second to 45 per second
• The spellcasting animations for the following skills have been modified to allow the effect to occur quicker and for the player to move sooner after casting: Acid Cloud, Corpse Spiders, Firebomb, Locust Swarm, Poison Dart, and Zombie Charger

• Active Skills

• Acid Cloud

• Range increased from 45 yards to 50 yards
• Now deals 115% weapon damage plus 150% weapon damage over 3 seconds (up from 100% weapon damage followed by 75% weapon damage over 3 seconds); also benefits Acid Rain
• Skill Rune - Lob Blob Bomb

• Now increases base damage of Acid Cloud to 115% weapon damage
• Slime weapon damage increased from 25% to 50% per second

• Skill Rune - Slow Burn

• Now increases base damage of Acid Cloud to 115% weapon damage, and deals and additional 300% weapon damage over 6 seconds

• Skill Rune - Kiss of Death

• Cloud of acid weapon damage increased from 110% to 126%
• Weapon damage done to enemies who remain in the affected area increased from 83% to 165%, and damage is now dealt over 3 seconds

• Skill Rune - Corpse Bomb

• Weapon damage increased from 200% to 230%
• When casting Acid Cloud, your witch doctor will no longer attempt to walk closer to targets that are out of range

• Corpse Spiders

• Will now inherit +Critical Damage bonuses from the player
• Can now proc Life on Hit for the player
• Are aware of enemies from further away
• Have increased speed when pursuing enemies
• Skill Rune - Spider Queen

• Changed from 16% weapon damage per second for 15 seconds to 630% weapon damage over 15 seconds
• Tooltip has been updated to clarify that you may only have one Spider Queen active at a time

• Firebats

• Weapon damage increased from 150% to 180%
• Skill Rune - Plague Bats

• Maximum weapon damage increased from 225% to 270%

• Skill Rune - Hungry Bats

• Weapon damage increased from 280% to 350%

• Skill Rune - Cloud of Bats

• The damage of the bats will now increase by 20% (up from 10%) every second, up to a maximum of 100% additional damage (up from 50%)

• Firebomb

• Weapon damage increased from 85% to 110% (this benefits all runes except Pyrogeist)
• Skill Rune - Fire Pit

• Changed from 8% weapon damage for 3 seconds to 36% weapon damage over 3 seconds
• Proc coefficient reduced from 0.67 to 0.067

• Skill Rune - Pyrogeist

• Changed from 140% weapon damage over 3 seconds to 640% weapon damage over 6 seconds
• Tooltip has been updated to clarify that only one column of flame can be active at a time

• Gargantuan

• Gargantuan survivability has been increased:

• Maximum Life now scales with the player's Maximum Life
• At level 60, the Gargantuan will receive an additional 50% of the player’s Maximum Life
• The amount of damage a Gargantuan can take from a single hit is now capped. The cap scales with the player's level, and is further reduced by the player’s Armor and Resistance.

• Weapon damage increased from 25% to 100%, but can no longer trigger procs
• Skill Rune - Humongoid

• Weapon damage increased from 32% to 130%

• Skill Rune - Wrathful Protector

• Weapon damage increased from 55% to 110%

• Skill Rune – Bruiser

• Weapon damage increased from 100% to 200%

• Grasp of the Dead

• Now does 320% weapon damage over 8 seconds
• Skill Rune - Death is Life

• Now has a 10% chance to produce health globe or summon a Zombie Dog

• Horrify

• Cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds

• Plague of Toads

• Mana cost reduced from 34 to 12

• Poison Dart

• Skill Rune - Spined Dart

• Mana return on hit increased from 24 to 29

• Skill Rune - Flaming Dart

• Weapon damage increased from 160% to 180%

• Spirit Barrage

• Weapon damage increased from 190% to 230%
• Skill Rune - Well of Souls

• Weapon damage increased from 30% to 65% for each of the bonus projectiles

• Skill Rune – Manitou

• Changed from 28% weapon damage every second for 20 seconds (for a total of 560% weapon damage) to 1667% weapon damage over 20 seconds
• Search radius for targets has been increased from 20 yards to 30 yards
• Proc coefficient reduced from 0.5 to 0.125
• No longer shows a buff icon

• Spirit Walk

• Skill Rune - Umbral Shock

• Weapon damage of explosion increased from 85% to 310% but is no longer increased by attack speed

• Skill Rune - Severance

• Changed from 100% weapon damage per second to 450% weapon damage over 2 seconds

• Soul Harvest

• Skill Rune - Languish

• Movement speed reduction increased from 60% to 80%

• Skill Rune - Vengeful Spirit

• Weapon damage increased from 70% to 230%

• Summon Zombie Dogs

• Zombie Dog survivability has been increased:

• Now also receive 35% of the player's Maximum Life
• The amount of damage a Zombie Dog can take from a single hit is now capped. The cap scales with the player’s level, and is further reduced by the player’s Armor and Resistance.

• Cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 45 seconds
• Skill Rune - Rabid Dogs

• Proc coefficient has been reduced from 1.0 to 0.10

• Skill Rune - Burning Dogs

• Proc coefficient has been reduced from 1.0 to 0.05

• Wall of Zombies

• Now does 800% weapon damage over 5 seconds

• Zombie Charger

• Skill Rune - Leprous Zombie

• Changed from 25% weapon damage for 3 seconds to 240% weapon damage over 3 seconds

• Skill Rune - Wave of Zombies

• Weapon damage increased from 72% to 115% per zombie

• Passive Skills

• Circle of Life

• Chance to summon a Zombie Dog when an enemy dies increased from 5% to 30%

• Grave Injustice

• Mana and Life gain increased from 1% to 2% of their maximum values whenever a nearby enemy dies

• Rush of Essence

• Now returns a flat amount of Mana over 10 seconds (49 Mana at level 60)

• Spirit Vessel

• Spirit realm duration reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
• Heal increased from 10% to 15% of player’s maximum Life
• While in the spirit realm, players can now walk through enemy monsters

• Vision Quest

• Vision Quest has been redesigned and now grants 30% increased Mana regeneration for 5 seconds after doing damage with Corpse Spiders, Firebomb, Plague of Toads, or Poison Dart

• Tribal Rites

• Now also benefits Gargantuan, Mass Confusion, and Summon Zombie Dogs

• Bug Fixes

• Corpse Spiders

• Skill Rune - Leaping Spiders

• Spiders will now always leap to their target as soon as it’s in range

Wizard

+ Show +

• Active Skills

• Arcane Torrent

• Arcane Power cost reduced from 20 to 16
• Weapon damage increased from 175% to 210%
• Skill Rune - Death Blossom

• Projectiles are now less random

• Skill Rune - Arcane Mines

• Weapon damage increased from 150% to 180%

• Skill Rune - Cascade

• Weapon damage increased from 175% to 210%

• Archon

• Slow Time duration increased from 8 seconds to 15 seconds
• Skill Rune - Arcane Destruction

• Weapon damage increased from 450% to 1600%

• Diamond Skin

• Skill Rune - Mirror Skin

• Amount of damage reflection increased from 50% to 100%

• Skill Rune - Enduring Skin

• Duration bonus increased from 8 seconds to 9 seconds

• Skill Rune - Diamond Shards

• Weapon damage increased from 155% to 210%

• Electrocute

• Weapon damage increased from 80% to 90%* (this also benefits Chain Lightning, Forked Lightning, and Surge of Power)
• Skill Rune - Forked Lightning

• Weapon damage increased from 46% to 55% per charged bolt

• Skill Rune - Lightning Blast

• Weapon damage increased from 80% to 86%

• Skill Rune - Arc Lightning

• Weapon damage increased from 80% to 115%

• Energy Twister

• Proc coefficient reduced from 0.25 to 0.125

• Explosive Blast

• Skill Rune - Time Bomb

• Weapon damage increased from 293% to 315%

• Hydra

• Skill Rune - Arcane Hydra

• Weapon damage increased from 28% to 60% per Arcane Orb

• Skill Rune - Lightning Hydra

• Weapon damage increased from 34% to 64%

• Skill Rune - Frost Hydra

• Weapon damage increase from 31% to 36%
• Cone width changed from 15 yards with a 60 degree spread to 35 yards with a 30 degree spread

• Skill Rune - Mammoth Hydra

• Weapon damage increased from 22% to 67%

• Ice Armor

• Increased the likelihood that attackers will be Frozen rather than Chilled
• Skill Rune - Crystallize

• Armor bonus per stack increased from 15% to 30%

• Skill Rune - Jagged Ice

• Weapon damage as Cold increased from 100% to 130%

• Meteor

• Weapon damage increased from 200% + 60% over 3 seconds to 260% + 60% over 3 seconds
• Skill Rune - Molten Impact

• Weapon damage increased from 260% +78% over 3 seconds to 390% + 90% over 3 seconds

• Skill Rune - Meteor Shower

• Weapon damage increased from 80% to 104%* for each smaller Meteor

• Skill Rune - Comet

• Weapon damage of initial hit increased from 240% to 312%

• Shock Pulse

• Skill Rune - Fire Bolts

• Weapon damage increased from 136% to 152%

• Skill Rune - Lightning Affinity

• Arcane Power restored per pulse increased from 2 to 3

• Spectral Blade

• Skill Rune - Impactful Blades

• Now guarantees to Slow the movement speed of enemies by 80% for 1 second (rather than a 5% chance to cause Knockback and Slow the moment speed of enemies by 60% for 1 second)

• Skill Rune - Siphoning Blades

• Arcane Power restored per hit increased from 1 to 3

• Teleport

• Skill Rune - Calamity

• Weapon damage increased from 75% to 265%

• Bug Fixes

• Cold Blooded

• Tooltip has been updated to clarify that all damage is increased by 20% to Frozen or Chilled targets, not just Cold damage (functionality of the skill has not changed)

+ [20/08/12 - Introducing the Paragon System] +

Introducing the Paragon System

While working on patch 1.0.4, we came up with all sorts of ideas for ways to improve Diablo III. Some of them you’ve probably already seen, such as the general systems changes, the awesome buffs for Legendaries, and the improvements we’re making to the barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor, and wizard. The entire team really banded together to get as much into this patch as possible, and one of the exciting changes I’d like to tell you about today is called the Paragon system.

Two of the issues we’ve been thinking about while working on patch 1.0.4 have been what to do with Magic Find and how to give level-60 players who aren’t satisfied with the item hunt something more to strive for. I’m sure many of you are aware of the blog we posted proposing some different Magic Find gear-swapping solutions, as well as our general thoughts on how rewarding the game is once you hit level 60. The Paragon system is designed to help us address these concerns -- but before we get into exactly how it works, let’s go over these two core issues in a little more detail.

Magic Find

As you may remember, we posed a number of possible solutions to the gear-swapping issue and asked you to give us your feedback. While we saw some support for a couple of the options, what your responses ultimately told us was that although having to swap into Magic Find gear mid-fight annoyed some of you greatly, others were ambivalent, didn’t gear swap themselves, or -- in a few cases -- wanted to see gear-swappers penalized in some fashion. Those who do swap gear generally do so for the raw power advantage it gives, so we wanted any solution we went with to provide the same level of power. Overall, our analysis of the situation really hammered home one stark truth: we needed to come up with a way to make our Magic Find system more fun.

Level 60 Rewards

We understand that some players feel frustrated once they hit level 60 because they no longer feel like they’re making progress. It can be demoralizing to play for an hour, not get any drops, and also be out a big chunk of gold from repair costs. Your play session may not only end without an upgrade, it can wind up being a net loss. Everyone wants to feel like they’re making some progress when they log in, even if they don’t get that new sword.

Introducing the Paragon System

The new Paragon system coming in patch 1.0.4 is designed to address Magic Find gear-swapping while providing players who’ve reached level 60 with an extended progression system.

Here’s how it works:

• After you hit level 60, any further experience you earn from killing monsters will begin to count toward Paragon levels
• There are 100 Paragon levels
• Every Paragon level will reward you with:

• Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
• 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find
• In addition, a distinctive increasingly-impressive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown

We know that a lot of you out there are level 60 -- maybe on multiple characters -- and this system provides a way to make progress every time you log in to the game.

… What Was That About Magic Find On Items?

While the benefits to progression are obvious, you may be asking how this impacts Magic Find on items. We wanted to find a solution that was not only very forgiving of gear swapping, but one that would ultimately help us slowly and gently move Magic Find off of items in the future. It’s such an intrinsically important stat to the core purpose of playing the game that tying it to gear -- which is a customization system in many ways -- is ultimately an approach that would continue to cause problems. We need to transition away from it, and do so in a way that doesn’t flip the entire game end-over-end.

With the Paragon system in place, we’re capping Magic Find and Gold Find to 300% (before Nephalem Valor). This means that without any Magic Find gear at all, you’ll hit the cap when you reach Paragon level 100. This way, you can continue wearing your current Magic Find gear as you slowly but surely work to gain Paragon levels. Eventually, once you hit Paragon level 100, you’ll have the freedom to completely focus every slot on stats that help your character kill stuff faster and stay alive longer. The idea is that if you’re currently swapping gear in and out for the Magic Find bonuses, you can continue to do so… but gain enough Paragon levels, and you won’t need to anymore.

Phew…

The Paragon system is a fairly big addition to the game, and one we’re pretty excited about. On behalf of the entire Diablo III development team, we hope you enjoy the changes we’re making with patch 1.0.4, and we look forward to seeing you in-game when it releases. Stay tuned to Diablo3.com for the final patch notes and official launch announcement in the days ahead.

Jay Wilson is Game Director for Diablo III, and his Necron army is WAY better than your Eldar army.

+ [20/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Auction House Updates] +

Patch 1.0.4 Auction House Updates

Over the last few days, we've seen a lot of requests from players for us to make improvements to the auction house. We've also seen questions regarding what, if any, changes are being made to the AH in 1.0.4. While we've already talked about many of the updates we have planned, we know some players may have missed those discussions. So, rather than make you wait for the patch notes, we've put together a list of everything that's changing in 1.0.4 for you below.

Take a look:

General Improvements:

• Players can now cancel their auctions at any point so long they do not have any active bids on them (it will still take five minutes for a listed auction to become searchable, however).
• We've increased the maximum stack size of gold per listing from 100,000 to 1,000,000. The current minimum listing price will remain the same per stack.
• We've added description text to several error messages. We've also improved several existing descriptions so that they more clearly describe why you've encountered an error.

Search Improvements:

• We're upping the allowed number of "Preferred Stats" per search from 3 to 6.
• We're upping the number of digits you can enter in the "Min Value" field for equipment searches from 3 to 5 (i.e. you can now search for values > 999).
• We've replaced “Minimum Damage” with “Average Damage” as a searchable stat, which can be calculated as follows: (Min Damage + Max Damage) / 2. So, for example, searching for an Average Damage of 12 will find an item with 10-14 damage, 12 Minimum damage, or 24 Maximum damage.
• Stat increases which come from slotted gems will no longer be factored in when searching for equipment. Instead, your search criteria will only take into account the base stat values for an item.
• Armor, DPS, Buyout, and Time Left columns are now sortable columns in the Search tab.

UI Improvements:

• The Auctions tab and Completed tab will now refresh whenever one of your items has been purchased.
• Whenever an auction expires or is cancelled, the listing price of that item will now display in the Completed tab.
• Tooltips have been added for items in the Completed tab (which means you'll be able to see the stats of the items you've purchased or sold, as well as items which failed to sell or were cancelled).
• Tooltips have been added for commodities.
• Item Compare tooltips have been added to the Recommended Items page.

In addition to these improvements, we're also fixing several bugs with the auction house UI and functionality (many of which you reported on these forums).

Bug Fixes:

• Auction house filters are no longer case-sensitive.
• Players can now search for stats on Legendary items! Yay!
• The Recommended Items page will now display quivers for demon hunters even if you have a two-handed ranged weapon equipped.
• Witch doctor's Corpse Spider bonus is now listed when searching for mojos.
• And, last but not least, we've fixed several issues with affixes not displaying correctly or being unavailable for equipment searches:

• "Attack Speed" is now a searchable affix for quivers
• Items with the "Level Requirement Reduced" affix will now properly appear in search results when specifying the level range
• Searches will now properly filter results according to the set Minimum and Maximum values for"Life per Spirit Spent"

And there you have it! Please note that this isn’t a preview, and that the above list represents every change we are making to the auction house in 1.0.4. While the list is exhaustive for this patch, it's definitely not the end of the road -- we still have additional improvements planned for 1.1.0 and for the long-term. We don't have a lot of juicy details to share right now on that front, but we'll be sure to provide more information as development continues

+ [18/08/12 - Sneak Peak At A Couple More Legendaries] +

The effects from Legendary procs will not damage other friendly members of your party. There are quite a range of proc effects we’ve added, and while some share similar visual effects with monster affixes, we tried to ensure that there was a visual distinction as much as possible. Also, there are quite a number Legendary procs that haven’t been discovered yet, and many are rather … interesting.

Take, for instance, this lovely ring:

Puzzle Ring (Ring) - This ring gives heroes a chance to summon a Treasure Goblin when they’re hit. The tooltip will be something along the lines of: "This ring sometimes calls forth a Treasure Goblin when you are hit."

…I bet that will prove to be entertaining during a boss fight.

Well, perhaps you or one of your friends could offer the Butcher a piece of your mind by using one of his special attacks against him!

The Butcher’s Sickle (1h Axe) – This item will now give players a chance to cast the Butcher’s sickle attack, dragging enemies to them. The tooltip should read something along the lines of: “X% chance to drag enemies to you when attacking.”

I suspect such an item would, at the very least, be appealing when chasing down those rogue Treasure Goblins.

+ [17/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Witch Doctor] +

Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Witch Doctor

Out of the five Diablo III classes, witch doctors are receiving the most attention in patch 1.0.4. The goal for this patch, like for many of the other classes, was simple: identify the unpopular or hard-to-use skills, figure out what’s not working, and then make them better. In some cases, skills only needed slight tuning -- a little more damage here, or some increased durations there. In other cases, more significant changes were required. For the purpose of this preview, we'll focus on the bigger changes, which can be broken down into the following categories:

• Pet survivability
• Vision Quest design flaws
• Splinters and Zombie Bears are way more appealing than most other skills

Pets

One of the core play styles for the witch doctor (and indeed the reason many people chose to play a witch doctor to begin with) is to have pets. Unfortunately, while witch doctor pets do pretty well in Normal difficulty, their survivability has been virtually non-existent in Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. From our perspective, this isn't acceptable, so we're making some significant buffs to pets in 1.0.4. The goal of these buffs is to make pets not only more viable in those later difficulties, but also more enjoyable for players who prefer to base their builds around them.

From a design perspective, we want your pets to be durable enough so they can tank for you, but we don't want them to just be automatically immortal. The cooldown on summoning pets is there for a reason. Speaking more specifically, we'd like for there to be times when your pets have died, your cooldowns haven't refreshed yet, and you have that period of increased tension as you wait for the situation to stabilize again. On the other hand, we'd also like for there to be noticeable improvements for players who put thought and effort into their skill and gear selections to make their pets as strong as possible.

Trial and Error:

One of the first things we tried internally was to have Zombie Dogs scale their Life directly with their owner's Life (Zombie Dogs already inherit Armor and Resistance from their owner). This had mixed results. For example, if the player stacked a large amount of Life, Armor, and Resist, it was possible to have Zombie Dogs tank most of Act I and parts of Act 2 in Inferno. As much as it made sense to have Zombie Dogs scale directly with your gear, it actually inhibited a completely different playstyle: players who wanted their witch doctor to be more of a glass cannon, but still have their Zombie Dogs able to tank. And with that we went back to the drawing board.

The next time around we gave the Zombie Dogs a base amount of Life, and in addition to this base value, they would also receive 35% of their owner's Life. So, you had a Zombie Dog that could scale with your gear, but if you were built as a glass cannon you’d still have that base amount of Life to fall back on. To help with general survivability, we also gave Zombie Dogs some innate passive Life regeneration. This test was much more successful. The Zombie Dogs could survive through most parts of Act I and Act II of Inferno just fine and died only occasionally to really difficult encounters. In Act III and Act IV, however, they could take maybe one or two hits, but the outcome was always the same: dead Zombie dogs. We tried increasing the bonus to 100% of their owner's Life -- and even to 150% at one point, just to see what would happen -- but it was to no avail. The incoming damage just scaled up too high in those later Acts.

So, we made some more adjustments to their scaling, we gave them more passive regeneration, and we made pets resistant to even more AoE effects (such as Plagued, Frozen, and Mortar). The result was positive, but not perfect: Zombie Dogs could now tough out Acts I and II of Inferno, but they were still melting in Acts III and IV.

The Final Product:

Our final iteration was to give Zombie Dogs their own version of the wizard skill Force Armor, which limits the amount of damage a wizard can take in a single hit up to 35% of their maximum Life. Much like the rationale for reducing damage for AoE effects, pets take more damage from melee than players. Pets also don't back off when they’re low, make use of doorways, or avoid big attacks.

When translating "Force Armor" over to Zombie Dogs, we wanted to make sure they could still scale with the player's Life, Armor, and Resistances. So, rather than a flat 35%, the damage cap per hit is based on inherited Armor and Resistance values, and rather than scaling with the total Life, the mitigation amount is calculated on the base health of the Zombie Dogs, allowing additional Life to actually scale exceptionally well.

This might be a bit confusing, so let's set up an example using a level 60 witch doctor. Let’s say this witch doctor has 32,000 Life, 45% mitigation from Armor, and 30% mitigation from Resistances. (For clarity, this means that 55% of incoming damage gets past the player’s Armor, and 70% of the incoming damage gets past Resistances.)

• The base Life of a level 60 Zombie Dog is 10,000 Life
• With scaling, each Zombie Dog will have 21,200 Life (10,000 [base] + 32,000 * 35% [scaling])
• The maximum damage the Zombie Dog can take in a single hit will be 3850 Life (10,000 [base] * 55% [damage not mitigated by armor] * 70% [damage not mitigated by Resistances])
• Ignoring passive Life regeneration, this means each Zombie Dog will always be able to take at least 5.5 hits (21,200 [Life] / 3850 [damage])

Once you factor in some passive Life regeneration and healing from health globes, Zombie Dogs can do reasonably well in Inferno. Players who decide to go with a glass cannon build while using Zombie Dogs will have pets that can tank for short periods of time. Meanwhile, players who build with some survivability and choose pet-oriented passives like Fierce Loyalty, Zombie Handler, and Jungle Fortitude will find their pets to be extremely durable and very capable of handling all Acts of Inferno.

Vision Quest

As it stands now, without Vision Quest, many builds feel like you never have quite enough Mana.

Don't get me wrong: feeling like you always want more Mana can be a good thing, otherwise the resource system isn’t really doing its job. Even so, there are two major issues with Vision Quest that we want to address. The first is that it can feel very "feast or famine" when you're using it; sometimes you have near limitless Mana and at other times you're starved for resources. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it forces you to keep four skills on cooldown in order to be useful. This can be frustrating for a witch doctor who wants to use a cooldown skill strategically, but ends up casting the spell early for the Mana regeneration benefits.

Let’s use Big Bad Voodoo as an example. Big Bad Voodoo might be ready to go, but you need it on cooldown for Vision Quest to stay active. So, you cast the skill with only a handful of enemies on the screen. Then, no more than 20 seconds later, you come across a nasty Elite pack. While this would be a great moment to drop a Big Bad Voodoo to help you kill everything in sight (and ultimately avoid being killed yourself)….the skill is, of course, on cooldown. This can be a very aggravating experience! This isn't a dilemma we want players to face on a regular basis, so Vision Quest is getting redesigned for 1.0.4.

What’s Changing:

We're keeping the focus of the skill on Mana regeneration, but we're going to shift the way you get that regeneration away from needlessly spamming cooldowns to attacking and doing damage. The first thing we're doing is increasing the baseline Mana regeneration of all witch doctors from 20 Mana per second to 45 Mana per second. Not only does this help to alleviate the "feast or famine" effect, it also acts as a big buff to witch doctors who choose to skip Vision Quest. As for Vision Quest itself, it will increase Mana regeneration by 30% for 5 seconds after dealing damage with Firebomb, Corpse Spiders, Poison Dart, or Plague of Toads. One of the fun things about this set up is that you can combine it with a Spider Queen (Corpse Spider rune) or a Pyrogeist (Firebomb rune) and they’ll keep Vision Quest active for you the entire time they’re out.

Of course, Vision Quest going down to 30% can seem scary. Base Mana regeneration is increased, and the new mechanics actually allow for Vision Quest to have a very high uptime, but is it enough?

As we continue internal testing, one of our checks to determine how well Vision Quest is performing is to see if a level 60 player can still summon hordes of stampeding Zombie Bears. While we can't accommodate every skill and build combination out there, the goal for Vision Quest is that a player who has chosen the right passives and gear will still be able to summon waves of stampeding bears for at least a few seconds. The new Vision Quest is a lot less "feast or famine" than before, which means some players won't be able to spam Zombie Bears for quite as long, but the tradeoff is you’ll have a more consistent stream of Mana coming in, and (more importantly) you'll have your cooldown-controlled skills available to use strategically for maximum effect. A more reliable Mana stream, being able to use your cooldowns, and having the option to use other active and passive skills seems like a better design for the class as a whole for the long term.

Skill Options

In case you're wondering, we’re not touching Splinters or Zombie Bears this patch. While these are the two most popular witch doctor skills right now, it’s probably not just because people love the sound of Splinters or the look of Zombie Bears (though both of those are pretty cool). Instead, their popularity is likely due to how attractive these skills are, both in terms of damage output and overall feel. To help compensate and open up more build options, we’re buffing a lot of other skills to make them as appealing as Splinters and Zombie Bears.

Speaking of how a skill feels, the reason players avoid many of the lesser used witch doctor skills have more to do with the skill feeling "slow." For example, Firebomb, Plague of Toads, and Corpse Spiders all have animation timing issues which are being improved for 1.0.4. In general, all of these skills will cast faster, which will make the class feel snappier and more responsive. We're also doing a straight damage increase on many skills including (but not limited to) Acid Cloud, Firebats, Firebomb, and Spirit Barrage.

That wraps up the witch doctor, and all of our class previews! We hope you're excited about these changes and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:

• Barbarian
• Wizard
• Demon Hunter
• Monk

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He doesn't always fold on a K-10 offsuit.

+ [17/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Demon Hunter] +

Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Demon Hunter

Hungering Arrow is currently the best-performing Hatred Generator for demon hunters. With its high theoretical damage output, strong Hatred generation, and straightforward mechanics, it's an easy go-to skill to have on your bar.

As with other classes, when there's a single skill (or set of skills) that is much stronger or more worthwhile to use, it curbs potential build diversity. To help open up some other options, we're taking a look at Hatred Generators and Spenders, as well as some of the demon hunter's more iconic abilities like Rain of Vengeance and Sentry, and will be upping the damage on all of them.

Hatred Generators

Four skills are intended to compete with Hungering Arrow as a Hatred Generator: Entangling Shot, Bola Shot, Evasive Fire, and Grenades. While each of these skills offer some unique utility options (Entangling Shot slows enemies, Bola Shot has an AoE component, Evasive Fire provides an escape route, and Grenades can bounce off walls), their damage just isn’t competitive enough when compared to the theoretical damage of Hungering Arrow and its rune variants.

In the case of Grenades, the skill has some minor mechanical and control issues that keep its unique ability to bounce off walls from really shining through. It can be difficult to get the grenade projectiles to where you want them, and using the skill doesn’t always feel very smooth. We explored some alternate targeting methods over the course of 1.0.4's development cycle to help improve this, but we weren't happy with anything we came up with. Most often, we found that by introducing targeting that allowed Grenades to bounce off a wall in a satisfying way, it would often make it so you couldn’t hit a monster you directly clicked on. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a great solution yet, so the Grenades skill isn't going to get as much love this patch. However, we do want to revisit the skill in the future.

As for the other three Hatred Generators, rather than nerfing Hungering Arrow to be less powerful, we’re instead bringing up the damage values for all three skills to make them more attractive. To use Bola Shot as an example:

• Damage to the primary target is being increased from 130% to 160%
• Damage for Thunder Ball and Acid Strike is also being increased from 130% to 160%
• Damage for Imminent Doom to the primary target is being increased from 182% to 216%

With these changes, Hungering Arrow will still do more theoretical damage against a single target, but Bola Shot damage will become a viable DPS alternative and it will also do AoE damage. Entangling Shot and Evasive Fire are receiving boosts to their damage as well, so they should be much more compelling choices when it comes to Hatred generation. Much like Bola Shot, they won't compete directly with Hungering Arrow in terms of raw theoretical damage to a single target, but the DPS loss won’t be as great in order to gain the utility they offer.

Hatred Spenders

Our general philosophy for resource-spending skills (and this applies across all classes) is if you take the time to spend your resource, we want you to feel like you got a good return for it. Elemental Arrow is currently the most popular Hatred Spender in the demon hunter's arsenal and a good example for what works -- given how quickly you can fire off each arrow, you can deal a lot of damage to nearby enemies. Unfortunately, many of the other Hatred Spenders fail to meet this benchmark in terms of DPS output, so we're buffing them up to match.

To give you an idea of what kind of increases you’ll see in 1.0.4, let's use Chakram and Cluster Arrow as examples.

Chakram:

• We're increasing its damage from 150% to 170%
• We're increasing the damage for Twin Chakrams from 100% to 114%
• We're increasing the damage for Serpentine from 203% to 230%
• We're increasing the damage for Razor Disk from 165% to 187%
• We're increasing the damage for Boomerang from 188% to 230%
• We're increasing the damage for Shuriken Cloud from 30% to 34%

Cluster Arrow:

• We're increasing the initial bomb damage from 200% to 225%
• We're increasing damage for Maelstrom from 145% to 165%
• We're increasing damage for Loaded for Bear from 290% to 304%

Iconic Abilities

Just like Hydra for the wizard, Rain of Vengeance is intended to be a trademark spell for the demon hunter. We want it to be one of those buttons on your bar that you look forward to pushing -- not only because it's visually very fitting for the class, but also because it packs one hell of a punch.

While the skill is where it needs to be visually, mechanically it lacks the "oomph" that most iconic class abilities possess. Its damage is just far too low to compete with other skills available.

To bring Rain of Vengeance up to the level it needs to be, we made some pretty notable changes. Not only did we buff the damage, but Rain of Vengeance is one of the skills being converted to a strict X% weapon damage over Y seconds format, as alluded to in the Systems Preview. As a result, the new base skill is quite potent:

Current: 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds
1.0.4: 715% weapon damage over 5 seconds

(Anathema now also uses the "X% weapon damage over Y seconds format." Meanwhile, Dark Cloud, Beastly Bombs, Stampede, and Flying Strike are receiving straight boosts to their damage. )

Sentry is also a very distinctive spell that doesn't get used very often. It's interesting mechanically, and it has some nice potential for team play, so we'd like to make it more attractive. The solution was pretty simple for this one: we took its damage, and then we doubled it.

Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:

• Barbarian
• Wizard
• Witch Doctor
• Monk

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. While living in Texas, a scorpion once crawled out of his shoe.

+ [17/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Monk] +

Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Monk

The most important changes for the monk in 1.0.4 are aimed at improving damage-focused Spirit Spenders. We're happy with where Spirit Generators are right now, but unfortunately once you have Spirit, there aren’t very many appealing ways to use it. In many cases, the most effective use of Spirit has been to recast a Mantra repeatedly for the three-second bonus. While this is certainly one possibility, it doesn't seem as exciting as using one of the more offensively-focused Spirit Spenders (or at least having that option available).

Spirit Spenders

Exploding Palm:

From a strict usability standpoint, we think the visuals for Exploding Palm can be a little difficult to interpret. It's hard to tell who's affected by the Bleed and who's being damaged by the resulting explosion. Our Visual Effects team has made some improvements in 1.0.4 which will make it easier for players to tell who's bleeding and who's getting damaged.

From a mechanics standpoint, the three-second Bleed can make the explosion hard to pull off, and the damage just doesn't seem enough to be worth the Spirit cost. To help with both of these issues, we’re increasing the duration of the Bleed to nine seconds as well as its damage per second, which should make it more likely that monsters you’ve touched with Exploding Palm will go boom when they die.

Current: 220% weapon damage over 3 seconds
1.0.4: 745% weapon damage over 9 seconds

(Don't worry, Impending Doom is also having its duration increased to 15 seconds.)

Seven-Sided Strike:

The original intent for Seven-Sided Strike was for it to be a solid damage dealer that you could use for a quick burst. Where Serenity granted you an amazing period of invulnerability, and your other combat skills could put out some damage, Seven-Sided Strike would ideally exist somewhere in the middle by offering some invulnerability and some damage. Unfortunately, the way it currently plays out, Seven-Sided Strike feels more like a bad version of Serenity, and the damage just doesn’t seem worth it. To address this, we’ll be doing a straight damage increase to Seven-Sided Strike to make it an attractive option for those who are looking for a skill that really packs a punch.

The damage buff to Seven Sided Strike is significant. And although players rarely complain when a skill gets buffed, it does leave one wondering why a lower damage existed in the first place.

The answer is: our initial design was flawed in several ways. To get the skill where it needed to be, we identified three distinct problems that were plaguing not only Seven-Sided Strike, but other class skills as well, and each problem merited a damage increase.

• First, we're upping the damage of many skills with longer cooldowns in 1.0.4. Across all classes, if I can only hit a button once every so often, it needs to dole out some significant damage to justify the spot on my bar. While some skills, like Archon and Wrath of the Berserker, are significant enough to make the cut, there are a lot of skills that need DPS improvements to make their cooldowns worthwhile. Indeed, many monks use Seven-Sided Strike for the brief invulnerability, not the damage.
  
• Second, we're also upping the damage on skills that spend Spirit. As mentioned in the introduction, Spirit Spenders are getting buffed because the Spirit cost needs to be weighed against the benefit of using that Spirit on something else -- such as refreshing your Mantra.
  
• Third, we're taking a hard look at distinctive, class-defining skills that create better tension on your skill bar. We'd like to promote skills that help to fulfill the fantasy of a class; skills that make you feel happy that you chose the class you did. Since the fantasy of a monk involves being fast, agile, and hard to hit, Seven-Sided Strike seemed like a natural candidate.

We looked at making these improvements across all skills and all classes, and Seven-Sided Strike benefitted all three times. As a result, the 1.0.4 version of the skill is incredibly potent (we'll save the details for the patch notes).

Wave of Light:

Wave of Light is the kind of skill that just needs to do way more damage. It has a big Spirit cost, but it doesn’t seem to pay off based on the amount of Spirit invested into it. In general, we’d like Lashing Tail Kick to be a skill that’s good against a small number of targets and feels relatively "spammable," and for Wave of Light to be a skill that’s more of an investment -- something that you don’t use as frequently, but pays out with bigger damage numbers when you actually do hit the button.

Current: 215% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE
1.0.4: 390% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE

This is just for the base skill. Wall of Light, Explosive Light, and Pillar of the Ancients damage has also been buffed up by a fair amount.

Passives

In terms of passives, it's pretty clear at this point that One With Everything is considered a mandatory passive for all monks. While "mandatory" passives aren't great, making any major change would do more harm than good, particularly when a) incoming damage is so high and b) monks need the extra durability in order to survive. Additionally, as a result of this passive, monks are more heavily tied to their current gear, so making changes to One With Everything would have very noticeable negative repercussions to the gear monks have invested in.

While we'd prefer that there wasn't an "absolutely mandatory" passive, we're going to let this one ride for now. If we do try to make changes we'll ideally do it in a way that doesn't invalidate the passive, doesn't hurt monk survivability, and doesn't undermine the gear people are currently wearing.

Last but not least, we added the ability for monks to wield two-handed weapons in 1.0.3, along with supporting animations. This has allowed some monks who enjoy two-handers to play this way, but it's not always effective. In the Systems Preview, we mentioned that two-handed melee weapons are getting a buff, and that will help. As additional support, the Spirit generation bonus granted by The Guardian's Path is going to be increased from 25% to 35%.

Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:

• Barbarian
• Wizard
• Demon Hunter
• Witch Doctor

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He's currently debating whether to level his Shadow priest or "Laser Chicken" to 90 first when Mists of Pandaria comes out.

+ [16/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Wizard] +

Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Wizard

Like the other classes, the wizard is also seeing a lot of tuning improvements to help promote build diversity. Rather than focus on those minor adjustments, though (which you'll be able to learn more about in the 1.0.4 patch notes), I’m going focus the majority of this preview on Hydra.

Here are the major points I'll cover:

• Skill design philosophy for Diablo as a whole
• What makes Venom Hydra as strong as it is
• Why, rather than nerfing Venom Hydra, we're simply going to buff all the other Hydra variants

Nature of the Beast


From a development standpoint, we love Hydra and put a lot of effort into its design. In fact, Hydra took many times more development time to create than an average skill. There are more art variants, more spell effects, and more lines of code associated with Hydra than almost any other wizard skill in the game (except potentially Archon). We did this because Hydra is an iconic skill in the wizard’s arsenal and we wanted it to stand out. When you’re in a multiplayer game and you see that Hydra spawn, it’s instantly recognizable. And for those who are familiar with the class, you can also immediately tell which rune variant a wizard is running with.

Our goal for Hydra is to not just have each rune variant be visually distinct, but also for it to be better at something than the others. Specifically:

• Arcane Hydra: Best at AoE
• Lightning Hydra: Good against targets that move a lot
• Venom Hydra: Good against targets that stand still
• Frost Hydra: Good for snaring
• Mammoth Hydra: Best in hallways

New Tristram, We Have a Problem


Despite these goals, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Venom Hydra is simply the best Hydra to use, regardless of the situation. This is mostly to do with its very high damage output. Although (technically) against fast-moving targets the Lightning Hydra does slightly more damage, Venom Hydra does three times more damage if you get the target to stand still, and that difference is simply too big to pass up.

The other rune variants have similar issues. The range on the Frost Hydra is too short to be useful. The DPS loss Arcane Hydra takes for being good at AoE makes it too weak versus single targets (especially when you consider that most of the hard fights are against high health Elites). The niche for Mammoth Hydra is very narrow and, if you can get a target to stand still, Venom Hydra does more damage in hallways than Mammoth Hydra anyways.

Five Heads Are Better Than One


To address these issues, we’ve decided to boost the damage of Lightning, Frost, Arcane, and Mammoth Hydra. Venom Hydra will remain the best against stationary targets, but if the targets are moving in any way, Lightning should be a clear winner. The range of Frost Hydra has been more than doubled as well, which should allow it to fill the intended role of snaring. Arcane Hydra will do less damage than Venom Hydra versus a single target, but rather than doing approximately 60% less damage, choosing it should only cause about a 15-20% DPS hit against single targets -- and you should be much better against groups. Mammoth Hydra will be getting a modest bump, but ultimately "good in hallways" just doesn't seem like a very good specialty. We're going to keep an eye on this one for now, but down the road we’d like to find something much cooler for the Mammoth Hydra -- like giving it the ability to move around the battlefield without needing to be recast (just as an example).

Skill Diversity

One concern is how this change will affect skill diversity. If our goal is to promote a large variety of builds, why are we taking one of the most powerful wizard runes and then bumping all of the variants to match it rather than simply nerfing Venom Hydra?

From our point of view, it's okay for Venom Hydra to be extremely powerful. One of the trickiest things throughout our design process has been creating lots of appealing skills. You only have six skill slots, so the more appealing skills we can make, the more significant your choice becomes of which skills earn a spot on your bar. If a Signature skill is on the strong side, it starts to trump the other Signature skills. If a Signature skill is way too strong then it starts to trump your Arcane Power spenders as well. This hurts build diversity. Similar situations exist for Arcane Power spenders, many defensive skills, and the trio of Armor skills (Ice Armor, Storm Armor, and Energy Armor).

However, in the case of Hydra, the risk of trumping other skills is much lower. It’s totally okay for Hydra to be one of the most used skills because there’s still a lot of flexibility beyond making it your only source of DPS. If you can spare the skill slot, you’ll almost certainly want to combine it with a Signature skill to cast while the Hydra is out. If you can spare two skill slots, you can do even more damage by adding a secondary Arcane Power spender.

Trigger-Happy

While patch 1.0.4 has very few nerfs, one of them does affect the wizard. Rather than waiting for players to discover this change in the patch notes or while playing, I wanted to call it out here because it affects a build that I find to be quite cool and enjoy a lot.

Energy Twister is having its proc coefficient reduced from 0.25 to 0.125. For players who may not know what proc coefficients are: they affect how effectively a skill triggers procs (or effects that have a small chance to activate). Many skills (like Magic Missile) have a proc coefficient of 1. Skills that hit multiple targets or pulse multiple times have lower proc coefficients.
In the case of Energy Twister, specifically Wicked Wind, the 0.25 proc coefficient causes the skill to generate more procs in a given time period than any other skill. Currently, this is used in combination with Critical Mass to lower the cooldown on skills like Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. By reducing the proc coefficient from 0.25 to 0.125, the build still works and remains fairly strong, but it won’t be quite as good as it is now. (For those with extremely high Crit rates, you may not even notice much difference, but I wanted to call it out anyway. )

Originally, we weren’t going to make this change, but 1.0.4 also brings with it a number of new Legendary items, and many of them have phenomenal new proc effects. If we left high proc coefficients as they were, then a handful of skills with higher coefficients would become the de facto choice to use with these sexy new items. We were faced with a choice: we could either reduce the proc coefficient, or we could make it so these skills could not trigger the procs on Legendary items at all. We opted for the former because it seemed like getting a Legendary with a proc effect but never seeing it trigger would be very disappointing. Regardless, having well-balanced proc coefficients on all skills is not only better for Legendaries, but also for the game in the long term.

Buffs, Buffs, and More Buffs


The reduced proc coefficient is just a drop in the bucket, and overall wizards are seeing their fair share of buffing.

In addition to the Hydra buffs, we're also increasing the damage of some lesser used Signature skill runes. A few skills are very popular right now such as Seeker (Magic Missile) and Piercing Orb (Shock Pulse), so we’ll be buffing the other runes to match. We'll be revisiting all of the other Signature skill runes with much the same philosophy as Hydra.

Meteor and Arcane Torrent are both going to get buffs, as well, since neither of those feel strong enough to justify the Arcane Power expenditure. Meteor requires the player to correctly predict enemy movement in order to deal maximum damage, and Arcane Torrent requires you to stand still for extended periods of time to do damage. Since a player is putting in some extra effort to use these skills, some extra damage seems justified.

Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch1.0.4:

• Barbarian
• Monk
• Demon Hunter
• Witch Doctor

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He loves all of you. Especially you.

+ [16/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Barbarian] +

Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Barbarian

One of our primary goals with class changes in patch 1.0.4 is to help improve build diversity. Of course, this has been a goal for the Diablo III development team since launch, but our approach this patch has been a little different. For 1.0.4, we're taking a good look at some of the most unpopular skills for each class, figuring out why they aren't being used in your builds, and then seeing how we can make them better -- either by redesigning how they work or just buffing the hell out of them.

For barbarians, we focused on improving the following areas:

• Bash and Cleave are not very attractive compared to Frenzy
• Many of the damage-oriented Fury Spenders don't do enough damage to justify the spot on your bar

Fury Generators

Frenzy:
It’s easy to see why Frenzy is the most popular Fury Generator right now. It generates a solid amount of Fury, it has the highest single-target damage of any Fury generator, and it has the highest single-target healing using Life on Hit. The bonus attack speed also provides good combat mobility as well as the option to focus all your damage on a single target or distribute it between multiple targets as needed. We're going to buff Bash and Cleave to be viable alternatives to Frenzy for people who would like to try a different play style.

Bash:
From a design perspective, Bash should be the definitive choice when it comes to maximizing your Fury generation. That’s not currently the case, and given the current state of the game, this means attacking the problem from two sides. First, we need to make Fury a more attractive resource to build up (which also means making Fury Spenders more attractive, which I talk about below). Second, we’re going to increase the amount of Fury generated by Bash from 6 to 8, as well as the amount of weapon damage done by Bash from 150% to 165%. The goal is to make Bash not only a very compelling option if you decide you want to focus on Fury generation, but also an appealing single-target alternative to Frenzy if you don’t enjoy its mechanics (like having to manage Frenzy stacks). Currently, Frenzy surpasses Bash in single-target damage as soon as you have your third stack of Frenzy, and it feels like the breakpoint should be around the fourth stack instead. These changes should help better balance the appeal of the two skills.

Cleave:
Looking at the three basic Fury Generators (Frenzy, Bash and Cleave), the role of Cleave is fairly straight-forward: it should be the clear winner when there is more than one target to hit. In a single-target situation, however, Cleave will always perform worse than Bash and Frenzy. While this is intended to a degree, the amount of single-target damage you currently have to give up feels too great to make the trade-off worthwhile. At an extreme, if Cleave did almost exactly the same damage as Bash or Frenzy, but had the ability to hit a second target when one was around, Cleave would definitely become that “clear winner.” So, to make it more appealing to some players, our goal is then to find that sweet spot between where Cleave is now and doing the same single-target as Frenzy and Bash. We’re going to increase both the damage and proc coefficient on Cleave to close the gap when fighting a single target.

Fury Spenders

For many players, using Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam, or Rend just doesn’t seem worth it. To make these skills more attractive, we're going to straight up buff their damage across the board. How much? Well, we noticed that more players use Battle Rage than any of these other Fury Spenders, but Battle Rage is less exciting to use and doesn’t quite evoke the same visceral joy. So, we used Battle Rage and Frenzy as our starting point. We basically asked ourselves the question "How much damage would Hammer of the Ancients have to do in order to make Frenzy + Hammer [of the Ancients] as appealing as Frenzy + Battle Rage?" Players who really want to go the extra mile for the most damage could go so far as to combine all three skills together, so we kept that in mind as well.

Hammer of the Ancients vs. Battle Rage was a simple starting point, but we used similar approaches with Seismic Slam, and Rend. The basic idea was: Fury generation isn’t attractive to players because Fury spending isn’t attractive to players, so what do the numbers need to be to fix that? To continue using Hammer of the Ancients as an example:

• We're increasing its base damage from 200% to 325%
• We're increasing the damage for Rolling Thunder from 155% to 275%
• We’re increasing the damage for Smash from 270% to 406%

And to provide another example, here’s what we’re doing with Rend:

• Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds
• Lacerate weapon damage increased from 271% over 3 seconds to 903% over 5 seconds
• Bloodbath weapon damage increased from 60% over 3 seconds to 100% over 5 second

With these improvements (Whirlwind and Seismic Slam will be receiving similar tweaks to improve their viability), we hope to see Fury Spenders become more appealing for all levels of play.

But What About…


I'll close by adding that there are no changes planned for either Sprint or Battle Rage, so all you crazy double tornado barbarians will still be able to log in after 1.0.4 goes live and continue with your current build. Or, you can try out some of the new toys we’re adding. Either way, we hope you have fun and are looking forward to 1.0.4!

Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:

• Wizard
• Monk
• Demon Hunter
• Witch Doctor

Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He is currently trying to convince a friend to make him a baneling plushie doll. (Any takers?)

[Cyanide]

+ [15/08/12 - Legen...wait for it...dary] +

Legen..wait for it...dary

Soon after we released Diablo III, many of you commented on Legendary items. Most of those comments were fairly harsh, but they were also dead-on accurate. In many ways the Legendary items that we released with the game were just Rares with flavor text. You called us on it, and we’ve listened.

Since then I've been working hard with the team to give Legendary items some of the flavor and feeling that they deserve. With patch 1.0.4 just around the corner, and the new Legendary items coming in that patch, I wanted to share some of the changes with you here today.

Let's talk about the biggest complaints we heard from you all, along with some we had from our team, and look at what we've managed to do to address them.

They Should Feel Unique

Many of you commented, rightly, that the Legendary items in the game didn’t feel unique enough. Something that Diablo II did really well was to create some very memorable items, and they were called “Uniques.” While we call them Legendaries now, the word “unique” was something we tried to keep in mind when making these changes. The rarity of Legendary items combined with their color means that when they drop you should feel like you’re getting something special, something that isn’t just another sword. A truly legendary item should have history behind it, something that you can imagine a powerful wizard imbuing with special magics from within the depths of his musty library.

Part of that feeling comes when you equip the item, and you see that it has special, custom artwork that sets it apart from every other item in the game. The artists already nailed this part of it, but with 1.0.4 they’ve gone the extra mile to ensure these items show off, visually, how truly epic they are. But we’ll cover that in a bit.

On my end, the design end, to get the uniqueness into Legendary items, we've added custom effects to over 50 of them. Here are just a few.

We're letting players exact some revenge on rare and Champion and Rare packs by giving players monster affixes through Legendary items. This is just one example.




Reminiscent of the Enchantress ability, this lets you turn enemies against each other.



Aside from looking really cool as it leaves a trail of fire behind you, this lets you create some interesting traps.



There's some just-for-fun stuff too. Everyone wants to be just like Ghom! These pants make you “stinky”, complete with debuff and gas cloud effect -- you can even spread this effect to friendly players.







A giant column of light shoots down, summoning an Angel to fight by your side. 'Nuff said.






This sword has a chance to summon a demon to fight with you -- with a twist. This demon has the Fire Chains affix, and the other end is attached to your character. Mwahaha!

Promote Build Diversity

Because Legendary items are unique, we can do some fun stuff with them that we can't really do with other types of items. One of the main goals of Diablo III and the skill/rune system is providing a huge amount of character customization. With Legendary items we can help support those goals.

In 1.0.4 we've added a number of items that really fit into a niche skill kit. This can help people to branch out into less common builds by seeing this item and thinking, heck, why not give it a try? They may not have the highest DPS stats in the game, but they can help you play your class in new and interesting ways.

Some people want to try out a ranged barb. We think that's awesome. Here you go.





The melee wizard concept is pretty popular, and we think this wand will be too.





Certainly not an uncommon build, but this is a great item for any pet-focused witch doctors, and with the pet buffs also coming in 1.0.4 we think it’s going to be very desirable.

Provide Interesting Choices

With great power comes great responsibility. Some affixes in the game seem like they'd be too unbalanced if we let them stack too high. So how do we make sure we can go higher?

Goldskin is a good example. 100% gold find on it, plus monsters have a chance to drop gold when you hit them. Not too bad, right? But the tradeoff is it can’t roll core stats. We instead follow the flavor of the item, and being a skin of gold (!), provide you with some additional resistances and mitigation. It’s going to create some interesting choices on how you can make this item work for you. You have to find other ways to get the stats that you really need if you really want all that sweet, sweet gold. Balancing your items out like this can provide some fun and interesting challenges.

Honoring Our Ancestors

We brought a lot of items back from the Diablo franchise for Diablo III, but in many cases all we really did was bring back their name. I don't think we did a great job initially of bringing back the way that they helped you play the game. We've done a pass on all the "ancestor" Legendaries to make sure they remain as true to their name as we could make them, and in some cases we've made them even better.

New Frosties feel a lot more like old Frosties, with big bonuses to Cold Damage and Cold skills.

Honoring the original by giving all projectile attacks a chance to pierce through the target's defenses.

They Feel Powerful

We used to reduce the value of certain affixes on Legendary items because we were concerned that having fixed affixes would make them unbalanced. What it actually did was make those items kind of crappy. For example, if the item's level (ilvl) was 50, the first affix would always roll at 50, then the next would roll at 47, and the next would roll at 43. This was done to offset the power of fixed affixes in a random world, but we've learned it's not necessary, and Legendary items being powerful is OK. So lesson learned, we no longer reduce the value of any of the fixed affixes on Legendary items. For example, if an ilvl 50 Legendary item had Strength as one of its fixed affixes, previously it may have rolled a range that you would have seen on a level 45 item, making it seem really underpowered, but now it will always roll within the range of a level 50 affix.

In addition, Legendary items used to cap out at ilvl 62, making it near impossible to find a weapon that had strong DPS. No more. We’ve promoted a LOT of the new Legendaries so that they will roll at ilvl 63, giving them access to the highest possible affix rolls that are in the game.

We're also working on some changes for 1.0.4 to make two-handers better in general, and this will affect two-handed Legendary items as well.

Here’s a good example of all-of-the-above.

Everything Else

That probably about covers it for the major points we're hitting with Legendary items in 1.0.4, but there's a few extra details on how they’re going to work once the patch hits we want to make sure everyone is prepared for.

Going Forward - As a reminder, these changes will only affect Legendary items that drop after the release of patch 1.0.4. This includes items that haven’t been identified yet (as items are rolled when they drop). With the extensive changes being made we can’t exactly translate old Legendary items to new. What might have been a decent item could become worse if we re-roll it, and vice-versa.

Not Everything is Changing! - Sometimes a Legendary just being really powerful is enough, and some Legendary items are already really good. Helm of Command, for example, won’t be changing in 1.0.4.

What About Sets? - It’s worth clarifying that green Set items are Legendary items (just with a set bonus) and so the above philosophy applies to them as well. Some set bonuses are changing, they’re becoming more powerful, and a lot of them are having their base ilvl increased to 63.

New Set Names - As set bonuses won’t interact between pre-1.0.4 and post-1.0.4 sets, the new Sets will have new names, as well as new individual pieces, to prevent confusion.

Crafted Legendaries - If you currently have a crafting plan for a Legendary item, and if we change the item that you’re able to craft in any way, you will NOT have to get a new crafting plan for that item. If you craft something right after 1.0.4 comes out you’ll get the new item.

We thank you for your continued feedback, and look forward to seeing how the new Legendaries treat you in 1.0.4 and beyond. Look out for additional 1.0.4 info blogs as we near the patch release.

One More Thing…

I’m really proud of how the entire team came together to make these changes -- and it truly was a team-wide effort. When we were first discussing buffing Legendaries and making them cooler, a bunch of the artists got really excited and went out of their way to make them a whole lot sexier. Here's a sneak peek at just a few of the changes they're making to the items, as well as some of their proc powers.

Please enjoy!

You Tube

You Tube

Andrew Chambers is Senior Game Designer on Diablo III, and spent six months running a live action Vampire the Masquerade game for over 100 people, and it mostly wasn’t to meet girls… mostly.

+ [11/08/12 - Developer Blog Update: 1.0.4 Systems Preview] +

Developer Blog Update: 1.0.4 Systems Preview

Well, we're getting closer to 1.0.4, and while it's still a few weeks away we're going to start hitting you fast and furious with blogs aimed at explaining the upcoming changes. To kick things off, I wanted to provide an overview of some of the larger systems changes and game improvements.

Let's get started!

So Happy Together

While many people are playing co-op, it’s still a minority of games. Ideally we would like players who want to play solo to be able to solo, and players who want to play co-op to play co-op. At the moment though playing solo is the clear choice, even for those who would prefer co-op with some of their friends.

The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage per additional player was a great start, but we can clearly go a bit further. The first change we’re making in 1.0.4 for co-op is to remove averaging in multiplayer games of Magic Find and Gold Find. You’ll benefit from your full Magic Find stat, independent of other players in the game. We originally added Magic Find averaging so optimal play did not involve people stacking what we call “adventure stats” to the detriment of their party. While this may re-emerge as a problem, we think the current solution feels like too much of a penalty, and is doing more harm than good.

Along the same lines as the change in 1.0.3, we’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now. This makes enemies far more manageable in co-op games, and rewards a co-ordinated group with a higher farming efficiency than playing alone.

Shrinking the Gap

We know there are a lot of you out there that are really frustrated by the difficulty of some of the champion and rare packs, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs (Champions and Rares). The design intent of Champion and Rare packs is to provide a spike of challenge, but in general we feel like the gap is too big. Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall. In general we’re looking to bring normal enemies up a smidge, and Champions and Rares down.

So, in 1.0.4 we’re increasing the health of normal monsters by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno, but also increasing the likelihood they drop magic or rare items by a factor of four. We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.

To further reduce the gap between normal and Elite monsters, we’re adjusting some of the more frustrating monster affixes, such as Fire Chains and Shielding.* Of course there are some normal monsters that are massive spikes in difficulty too, and we’ll be making polish adjustments to a few of those as well, like reducing the damage of two-handed skeletons like Skull Cleavers.

Fire Chains and Shielding were only provided as examples. We looked at every affix and have made adjustments to more than just those two. For example, we're giving players a temporary immunity to Fear after they've been Feared by a Nightmarish monster.

Keep in mind that the systems preview is more about explaining why these kinds of changes are being made, rather than detailing everything out line-by-line. (That's ultimately what patch notes are for.)

Negative, it only affects Magic items and Rare items (apologies for the confusion).

Just to clarify, we aren't making any changes to the chance that an item will drop. Instead, we're changing the quality of that item when it drops. And when we say we're increasing the likelihood that non-Elite monsters will drop magical items "by a factor of four," it means that those monsters should drop 4 times (or "4x") the amount of magical items as they do now. It's important to note, however, that this will only affect Magic items and Rare items.

So, for example, if doing a full clear of an area currently yields 500 items from non-Elites, it will still yield 500 items after 1.0.4. Whereas you may have only gotten 20 Magic (blue) items and 4 Rare (yellow) item from those non-Elites before, you’ll now get approximately 80 Magic items and 16 Rares.

Hope that helps!

Weapons Master

One of the general improvements we’d like to make to our item game addresses the difference between an item having a chance of being good vs. knowing the item isn’t going to be good before you even identify it. In other words, there’s a world of difference between an item having no chance of being good, and some chance of being good. It’s not something we’re going to be able to fully address in 1.0.4, but giving every dropped item a chance to be good is a long-term goal. One area we felt we could make immediate improvements for 1.0.4 was with weapons.

Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63.

We also want to close the gap between dual-wielding and two-handers, and so we’re improving two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes to compensate for the loss of stats that can come from your offhand.

On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills. Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways. It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns. We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”. Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear. As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed. So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher. A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds. The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.

Efficiency vs. Challenge

Rather than focus on whether or not you can beat an enemy, many players would rather figure out how fast they can beat them. We’re removing Enrage Timers and the “heal back to full” behavior from Champion and Rare monster packs. We don’t think they fit well into the general philosophy of the game, which is more about trying to farm as efficiently as possible. You’re already incentivized to kill things quickly, if a pack happens to take you a long time it can just feel unfair to have the pack enrage, kill you, and then heal back to full. The original intent behind Enrage Timers was to have a few encounters that served as a “DPS check” that also add tension and excitement. Due to the randomness of Champion and Rare monsters, combined with a general philosophy of efficient farming, this was simply the wrong approach for us to take. The Enrage Timers feel more appropriate on bosses, where the setup, predictability and mechanics of the fight add the required context for the time limit.

We can’t get away from the Efficiency vs Challenge discussion without talking about death penalties. When we increased repair costs in 1.0.3 it was to make death meaningful. Efficiency is not only about how fast you kill things, but what efforts you’re putting into doing so. Dying should cut into efficiency, and that creates a meaningful challenge to stay alive in not only how you play, but the importance of how you’re designing your character. That said, we think repair costs are just a bit too high, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to be reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.

Legendarier

We have improvements coming to Legendary items, and it seems like an important enough subject to give them their own blog. Stay tuned as Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers gives the rundown in the next week or two. As a general reminder though, existing items are not changing. The Legendary improvements are going to be for Legendaries dropped or crafted after the 1.0.4 patch goes live.

Stay Classy

We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each. But in general we’re looking at unpopular skills and asking ourselves a few questions:

• Does the skill have any control or readability issues that would make the skill less satisfying to use? If so – polish the skill more. A good example here is the Barbarian Rend ability – many people don’t use it because you can’t always tell which enemies are affected by the bleed and which aren’t.
  
• Does the skill fill a similar role as an extremely popular skill? If so, buff the skill to be competitive with the popular skill. For example, Bola Shot could be a solid skill, but simply doesn’t have the raw damage when compared to Hungering Arrow, so we’re buffing Bola Shot to be competitive.
  
• Does a skill have a dominant rune? If so, can we buff the underused runes to be more competitive? A good example here is the Wizard Hydra skill. The Venom Hydra is by far the most popular rune, and for good reason, so we are buffing the other runes to make them more competitive with Venom Hydra.
  
• Is the skill a resource spender? In general we have found that many resource spenders just don’t do enough for their resource cost. Here I would use the example of Wave of Light, which is a fairly significant expenditure of Spirit that doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Many damage-oriented resource spenders are receiving buffs in 1.0.4
  
• Would buffing the skill increase or decrease build diversity? Some skills when buffed cause other skills to become obsolete, so there’s a net decrease in build diversity - we’re more careful with those. Other skills, when buffed, add to the total pool of appealing skills, which increases build diversity. The most obvious example here is the Witch Doctor Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan, which are both receiving significant improvements in 1.0.4.

We hope you have fun, and stay tuned for each of the specific class articles in the next couple weeks.

The Outro

These are really just a few of the topline systems changes we’ll be making in 1.0.4, and we hope you’re looking forward to them as much as we are. We’ll of course have a lot more info coming at you in the weeks ahead on Legendary items, classes and more, as well as some interviews we’ll be holding shortly before the patch goes live – which, by the way, is currently targeted for the fourth week of August.

See you in-game!

*P.S. We’re getting rid of the Invulnerable Minions monster affix.

Wyatt Cheng is Senior Technical Game Designer on Diablo III, and as a member of Blizzard’s Beef Jerky Club is ordering jalapeno, habenero & ghost chili jerky this month.

+ [09/08/12 - Patch 1.0.4 Info Coming Soon™] +

Patch 1.0.4 Info Coming Soon™

The Diablo III developers have been hard at work on some exciting new features and updates for the game. Many of you have asked for more details, and we're busily preparing several developer blogs filled with information on what's coming in patch 1.0.4. In the meantime, here's an overview of the information we're planning to share here on the Diablo III community site in the not-too-distant future.

Please keep in mind that this list isn't set in stone, but it should provide a useful preview of what we'll be revealing in the days ahead.

System Changes, by Wyatt Cheng
Senior Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng is preparing a high-level summary of some of the system changes planned for 1.0.4.

Legendary Item Improvements, by Andrew Chambers
Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers is working on a blog detailing all the ways we’re making Legendary items stand out.

Magic Find Update, by Jay Wilson
Following up on earlier discussions, Game Director Jay Wilson will be providing an update on how Magic Find is evolving in patch 1.0.4.

Class Changes, by Wyatt Cheng
Wyatt will also be providing a preview of the changes we’ll be making for each class in 1.0.4 (and the philosophy behind those changes).

Patch Notes, by Lylirra
Of course, this is all building up to the actual patch 1.0.4 release, and we’ll be releasing the full patch notes shortly before the update goes live.


We're also planning to run some interviews and developer chats surrounding patch 1.0.4, and we’ll be sharing those on the Diablo III front page. Be on the lookout, as we'd love to get you involved in any live chats we host.

As always, your constructive feedback is very much appreciated. Stay tuned for the updates to follow!

+ [07/08/12 - New Character Profile Page Now Available!] +

07/08/12 - New Character Profile Page Now Available!

Yup, they’re ready.

All you need to do is log in with your Battle.net account (look for the login box in the upper-right hand corner of your screen) to access character profiles from any page on the Diablo III community site. Make sure that you've selected your Diablo III BattleTag in the login box, and, once you've selected your BattleTag, choose 'view profile'.

Profiles give you the power to:

• View your heroes’ gear, stats, and skills. How high have you raised your characters’ attributes? What are they wielding in each slot? What are their most prominent gear bonuses? What skills comprise their current build? Nuance awaits you in the Heroes tab.
  
• Track your game progress. How many acts have you cleared? What bosses have you shredded in each difficulty? How far have you leveled up your hardcore and normal artisans? Find out in the Career tab. You can also check your play time (by class) throughout your entire Diablo III career, and learn how many monsters and elites you’ve slain.
  
• Share with your friends. The Friends tab lets you check out your BattleTag friends’ characters, so that you can quickly compare notes on gear, skill & rune choices, and everything in between. You can also click on a BattleTag in the Diablo III forums to go directly to that player’s profile.

We like that profiles provide for easy sharing, comparing, and refining of your heroes as you pursue monster-slaying mastery. In fact, we like profiles so much that we plan to add even more functionality to them as Diablo III evolves, including detailed statistics and tabs for achievements and artisans.

If there’s something else you’d like to see appear in a character profile, please make sure to let us know in the comments below or on our website forums.

Happy Clicking!

-Blizzard Web Team

+ [03/08/12 - The Blues Have Finally Spoken...but mostly about the AH] +

On Setting Your Auction Duration

+ Show +

You mean being able to select the duration of the auction? We definitely have seen this feedback (and appreciate it), but we don't have any plans currently.

On Increasing AH Search Perimeters From 3 to 6

+ Show +

We're definitely working on filling the missing gaps. On a somewhat related note, we also want players to be able to search for stats on Legendary items.

Thanks for the feedback! We're looking to bump the number of Preferred Stats slots from 3 up to 6. We're also looking to bump the number of digits in the "Min Value" window from 3 to 5 (so you can search for Preferred Stat values higher than "999").

Making it so that stat increases which come from slotted gems aren't taken into account when searching for equipment is absolutely on the "to do" list.

This is also something we want to do

On Cancelling Auctions

+ Show +

We like this solution also. We definitely want to provide players with the option to cancel an auction (at any point after it's posted) so long as it does not have any bids. Right now, we're looking at this for 1.0.4, but that of course may change depending on implementation and testing.

On Non-Retarded Followers

+ Show +

Haha. They are a pretty excitable bunch, aren't they?

We want to improve follower AI, absolutely -- probably not for 1.0.4, but definitely for the future. This would of course include working to make it so that your followers don't go all LEEEEERRROOOOY JEEEENNNKINS on nearby monsters which you haven't yet attacked (like treasure goblins, Elites, etc).

On Changing Text Colour of Gems, Potions etc.

+ Show +

Changing the text color of gems (as well as potions, crafting pages, and tomes) has been something we've debated doing and not doing for a while now. We've finally come to an agreement, though, and decided to change the ground text color for these items from white to light blue. This is something we looking to implement in a future patch.

(We're also looking to make the gem drop sound much more prominent.)

+ [26/07/12 - Diablo III Hotfixes July (Wiz and Barb Bugs)] +

July 26
Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed wizards to become permanently invulnerable
• Fixed a health regeneration bug that occasionally affected barbarians when using Furious Charge

+ [19/07/12 - Message from Mike Morhaine] +

Dear Diablo Players,

Now that Diablo III has been out for two months, I would like to take a step back and discuss the launch, the feedback from the community, and talk about what the future holds for the game.

We’ve had an enormous amount of feedback since the launch. I speak for everyone at Blizzard when I say that we appreciate the passion and affection many of you have for the Diablo series. We truly believe “Every Voice Matters,” so I want to thank you for sharing your experiences in an effort to help us improve the game. Your support makes it possible for us to continue doing what we do, and we never take that for granted.

The launch week of Diablo III was memorable for many reasons -- some positive, and some not so positive. We were thrilled that Diablo III had the biggest PC-game launch ever, surpassing the lifetime sales of Cataclysm (the previous record holder for biggest PC-game launch) in a matter of weeks. We’ve been floored by the response.

However, the launch had many challenges as well. It has always been difficult to forecast how many players we will have. With World of Warcraft, it was a challenge to handle the immediate demand when we launched back in 2004, and that was just in North America. We eventually expanded to other regions and reached nearly 5 million players by the end of the first year, and there were a lot of growing pains with that. However, we’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game. For Diablo III, we looked at historical sales for Blizzard games and other top-selling PC games and watched preorder numbers. We even upped our estimates to ensure we had additional capacity, or so we thought. In the end, it just wasn’t enough, and that is something we will work hard to conquer for future releases.

In response to the immediate and overwhelming demand for the game, the team worked around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to our datacenters, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they sprang up. While things have by and large been running smoothly for several weeks now, various game-related issues have come up that we have either already responded to or are continuing to investigate (such as the latency issue some of you are experiencing) and make adjustments for. Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up. We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly.

We are not satisfied with breaking launch records; we want people to continue playing and enjoying Blizzard games for a very long time. The Diablo III team has made an epic, entertaining, and beautiful gaming experience. That being said, we know that it isn’t perfect. Our teams are working hard to improve the game balance, build on our design, and listen to what players are saying to make it the best game it can be.

You’ve seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you’ll see additional improvements with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Another topic we’ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. Patch 1.0.4 will also include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.

We’re also working on a number of interface updates, including social improvements that will allow players to more easily view their friends’ achievements, more quickly join games, and more efficiently communicate with each other. In addition, we’ll be making updates to the auction house in the future to provide players with better information through tooltips and notices, offer improved search functionality, and more.

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Black market trading sites can put accounts at risk and create many customer service challenges. We felt that the players themselves also deserved the opportunity to benefit from the extra loot they found, as opposed to having all of the benefit go to the black market/illegal trading organizations. We know the auction house isn’t perfect, but with your help and feedback, we’ll be able to continue making it a better experience for those who choose to use it. On the flipside, we are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention. Thank you for all the feedback about that.

One other common topic we’ve seen in the forums is the always-connected experience, and the perception that the online requirement is nothing but an ineffective form of copy protection that has already been cracked. While we’ve never said that this requirement guarantees that there will be no cheating or game cracks, it does help us battle those problems (we have not found any fully functional cracks). More important to us is that the online requirement is critical for the long-term integrity of the game experience. I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design. The effectiveness of the online elements -- including the friends list and cross-game communication; co-op matchmaking; persistent characters that you can use by yourself, with others, and in PvP; and some of our customer support, service, and security components -- is tied directly to the online nature of the game. These and other online-enabled features are essential to our design for Diablo III. That said, there are still improvements we believe we can make to expand the online experience and make co-op play even more rewarding, and this will remain one of our priorities moving forward. Overall, while there are some downsides to the online-only approach, I still believe this was the best long-term decision for the game.

I know many of you are also looking forward to patch 1.1, our PvP update, which will provide new experiences and give you a whole new way to apply the skills you’ve picked up while battling demons. This patch will also build on the social and auction house changes I mentioned above, and the team will continue to fix bugs and further tune game balance as well.

We’re also working on a gameplay system that will provide players who have max-level, high-powered characters new goals to strive for as an alternative to the “item hunt.” We’re not ready to get into specifics just yet, but I can say that we’re actively taking your feedback into account as we plan out the future of the game.

As always, we appreciate your candor and passion. Your constructive feedback and thoughts are valuable -- they will continue to help us be a better company. I just want to reiterate that while we can’t claim to have ever shipped a perfect game, we are committed to supporting our games relentlessly and making improvements where we can. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Mike Morhaime

+ [12/07/12 - Game Guide Information on Magic Find] +

Magic Find

Finding more and better magic items is critical to overcoming challenges and defeating enemies in Diablo III, particularly on higher difficulties. Magic find is a unique item property that can help you drastically improve your haul. It is tracked in the Inventory menu (Inventory > Details > Adventure).

But what does that really mean?

Magic find affects the quality of items you acquire from killing enemies (but not treasure chests, vases, weapon racks, or other environmental objects). It doesn’t give you a chance to get more items on a given kill – instead, it increases the chance that an item you find will be magical, and more potent than it would be otherwise.

When a monster drops an item, Diablo III randomly determines the item’s quality from a chart that includes item quality and the number of affixes present. The game randomly "rolls" on each property in the chart to determine which affixes your item will get. Your magic find score is applied as a bonus to these rolls.

For example, if a monster has a 4% chance to drop a 6-affix rare item and you have +50% magic find, it now has a 6% chance to drop that item.

Item quality is checked in the following order:

• Legendary
• 6-affix rare
• 5-affix rare
• 4-affix rare
• 2-affix rare
• 1-affix rare
• magic item

Using the above example, when your roll ‘misses’ a higher-level item quality, the item generator proceeds to the next lowest item quality in the chain (in this case, checking to see if you got a 6-affix rare, then checking for a 5-affix rare, and so on). Your magic find bonus applies to each roll. If the same monster has a 10% chance to drop a 5-affix rare item and you have 50% magic find, you now have a 15% chance to get a 5-affix rare item.

In a group, all players' magic find bonuses are averaged. So, if you’re in a four person group where two players each have +20% magic find and the other two players have none, all four players will effectively have +10% to magic find.

Source

+ [03/07/12 - Magic Find Gear Swapping] +

Since release it has become an increasingly common practice to keep a Magic Find (MF) set in your inventory, and swap it in shortly before a kill. Philosophically we don't have a problem with the practice. While players getting more Magic Find for their kills isn't a game breaker for us, many players have said they don't enjoy doing it but feel the benefit is too large to ignore. Since the call for a solution really comes from all of you, we'd like to invite you to chime in with your opinion on what the solution could be.
It's worth keeping in mind that if we do implement a method to alleviate gear-swapping in combat, we'll simultaneously be looking at ways for players to get an added MF bonus to compensate.

Here are the solutions we're currently considering, and would appreciate your feedback and opinion on what seems the most reasonable for you, and why:

Option 1: Set a Magic Find Cap
We could set an MF cap between something like 100% and 200%. Nephalem Valor provides 75%, so you would need between 25% and 125% to reach the hard cap. Everyone could find ways to hit the cap for MF% on their gear and then stop.

Pros: Creates a gearing-game around trying to hit the "MF% cap" that some players enjoy. It also solves the swapping issue for people with enough gear to hit the cap. Players who want to min-max and gear swap can do so, and players who think it's stupid but feel "compelled" can try to hit the new cap instead.

Cons: Depending on where the cap is set, it may not actually alleviate gear swapping, and players who wish they didn’t have to will feel compelled to do so. It also devalues a highly valuable stat, and desired stats mean desired gear, which helps diversify the item hunt.

Option 2: Slowly Adjust Magic Find Over Time
When you equip an item with Magic Find, we don't let your MF% change right away. Instead your Magic Find slowly "drifts" towards the target Magic Find -- potentially something like 1% every 3 seconds. If you open up your Character Details sheet, you can see the number change "8%... 9%... 10%." Even though you could in theory switch to Magic Find gear for the killing blow and get a few extra percent, it’s probably not worth it.

Pros: High degree of visibility as your stat sheet updates. Still allows you to swap your gear when you get an upgrade in the world without having to feel bad about putting the item on.

Cons: May not alleviate the problem for players who still feel compelled to get a few extra MF%. Depending on the rate, some players may just swap in an item during the last 20 seconds of a fight even though they don’t want to.

Option 3: Use your average MF% or your lowest MF% of the last 5 minutes
We could sample your MF% every 30 seconds or so and create a moving average, or use the lowest MF% the game has seen on your character in the last few minutes.

Pros: A lot of the same benefits as Solution 2, but harder to game. Still allows you to switch gear when you get an upgrade, which is great.

Cons: Difficult to communicate. We'd have to communicate this on the Details page somehow, but during normal gameplay there could be the sense of not knowing what your "moving average" is and wanting to look at it. Magic Find is already a difficult number to feel at any point in time, so hidden rules that modify Magic Find feel that much worse.

Option 4: Zero-Out Your MF% for 3 Minutes After Swapping Gear
When you swap gear, your Magic Find is disabled for 3 minutes.

Pros: Absolutely effective at discouraging gear swaps. Still allows you to swap gear when you find an upgrade, and the 3 minute duration is probably short enough that if you kill an Elite pack and get an upgrade, you can put that upgrade on and have your Magic Find active again by the time you get to the next pack.

Cons: Players who are unfamiliar with the system may open up their details page and see their Magic Find as 0% and not understand why. We could mitigate this by making the 0% MF colored with a tooltip stating the countdown until your Magic Find would work again, as well as what your Magic Find will be when the time expires.

Option 5: Gear Swapping Interacts with Nephalem Valor
There's a whole class of solutions that interact with Nephalem Valor. For example, we could remove a stack of Nephalem Valor when you swap a piece of gear.

Pros: Stops gear swapping just for the last kill, while still allowing the player the option to do so.

Cons: Some players will lose a stack by accident. We could put a confirmation box in to address accidental loss of a stack, but game-interrupting popups are potentially character-killing. It also causes co-op players to drop out of sync. One person may switch gear and lose a stack or two, and if it happens before a boss they'll want to clear two more packs before hitting the boss, but the other party members may not want to -- causing some tense social situations in co-op play. Finally, it tightly couples two systems together and generally tightly-coupled systems don't function over the long haul as well as loosely-coupled systems. In other words, future changes to the Nephalem Valor system or the Magic Find system (or systems related to those two systems) become harder to make as both systems would be impacted.

While we're having our own discussions and tests of how well these options could work, we’re interested to hear your thoughts. We’d mainly like to hear which approaches you like, if there are any specifics you like or don't like about it, and why. Having the context of how this affects you personally really helps us.

Source

+ [29/06/12 - Drop % Hotfix] +

• Inferno – Act I
• iLvl 61: 23.9%, up from 17.7%
• iLvl 62: 12.6%, up from 7.9%
• iLvl 63: 4.8%, up from 2.0%

• Inferno – Act II
• iLvl 61: 23.3%, up from 18.6%
• iLvl 62: 18.6%, up from 12.4%
• iLvl 63: 9.3%, up from 4.1%

• Inferno – Act III and Act IV
• iLvl 61: 27.1%, up from 24.1%
• iLvl 62: 21.7%, up from 16.1%
• iLvl 63: 16.3%, up from 8.0%

Sauce:
Diablo III Hotfix Blog Updated June 28th

+ [29/06/12 - iLVL Explanation] +

It is one piece of what determines an item's "budget". You can think of an item as a blank slate, and by placing specific labels on it that have pre-determined "costs" the item essentially has a number of points it can then "spend on itself". The game will say "This is an ilvl 63 rare set of gloves". Those labels determine what affixes it can have, its maximum and minimum ranges, as well as damage, speed, armor, etc. Essentially every part of the item is determined by its type (common, magic, rare, legendary), what kind of item it is (head, chest, sword, etc.) and item level. Crafted, Legendary and Set items follow the same rules, but can have set affixes on them that don't change but still have a range to roll.

Item's also have broad ranges, and will overlap. The below concept of that overlap is in no way accurate or indicative of anything at all, except to illustrate the overlap.

Completely made up power scale that has no basis in anything:

<--------ilvl61-------->

<--------ilvl62-------->

<--------ilvl63-------->

I'm probably missing something in there, but that's the basic gist. We're working on adding a ton of the more nitty gritty game design specifics to the Game Guide up-top. We're shooting for something not too unlike the old Arreat Summit to detail systems and the inner workings of the game, which should help with this specific question as well.

Sauce

+ [06/06/12 - Patch 1.0.3 Design Preview] +

Earlier today Blizzard posted on their blog upcoming updates to Diablo 3 in the forthcoming patch, here are the key details:

Bridging the Inferno Item Gap

+ Show +

Right now, we are all quite aware that farming Act 1 Inferno won't get you geared for Act 2, your going to have to spend more time in the AH right? Blizzard knows this and are wanting to change this around.

"The first is players who find an Act too difficult feel compelled to use the auction house in order to progress"

Blizzard are planning to change the way item drops work in Inferno to increase the change for more higher quality items to drop.

New drop rates for 1.0.3

Item	Hell Act III and IV	Inferno Act I	Inferno Act II	Inferno Act III/IV
iLvl 61	9 %	18%	19%	24%
iLvl 62	2%	3%	12%	16%
iLvl 63	0%	2%	4%	8%

"As you can see, players who would rather murder monsters 4x as fast in Inferno Act I can do so knowing they have a chance at amazing items, and players who want a challenge can kill in Acts III and IV in Inferno and be rewarded with a higher drop rate."

You Keep Using That Word

+ Show +

Blizzard are still working on legendary items, and won't be changed in 1.0.3, but we know they are working on it.

"When we’re done, high level Legendaries should be flat out better than blue items, they’ll carry a good amount of power with them, and they should also be distinctive or memorable in the benefits they provide.

The Nephalem Difference

+ Show +

Changes to the Valor stack that we all know and love are in the works for the upcoming patch. Blizzard feels like we are just getting enough stacks to kill a boss, and then rinse and repeat (Warden / Butcher runs anyone?) So to compete that, Blizzard are planning to change the way guaranteed loot drops work on bosses, in exchange for more drops on Elites and Champions.

"To help hit that goal we’re lowering the number of guaranteed Rare items on bosses when you have your full five stacks of Nephalem Valor from two guaranteed Rares to one guaranteed Rare (you still have a very good chance at multiple rares, it's just no longer guaranteed). In exchange, all champion and rare packs will now drop a bonus guaranteed Rare item when you have your full five stacks of Nephalem Valor. The change benefits players with more overall drops, and a reason to push to continue progressing."

You Into the Group Thing?

+ Show +

Well, say good bye to harder mobs when you decide to play with your friends:

"We’re removing the bonus monster damage per additional player in a coop game."

This change may come to a surprise for some of you, but it is a welcome sight in the realms of Inferno. There has been quite a few posts and suggestions to Blizzard saying that when you want to play with your friends, the game just doesn't become fun (Isn't that why we play with friends in the first place?) So in return, Blizzard will remove the buff to monsters when you have 2 or more players in your party.

Oh Yeah!

+ Show +

So, you've cleared Act 1, figuring you have a pretty decent set of gear you go attempt Act 2 where you get one-shot by those stupid stingers who shoot the tiny bug things, and those spastic leaper cats that throw bombs and run at you? Well fear no more! Blizzard, along with perhaps every other player, have realized that the difficulty gap between Act 1 and Act 2 is a massive leap, and are going to change this in 1.0.3.

"In patch 1.0.3 we’re going to be lowering that wall by adjusting the damage and health of monsters in Inferno Act II, III and IV. We feel like Act I Inferno is in a pretty good place.

Act 3 and Act 4 will remain unchanged and Blizzard has a good quote on the reason why:

"Our design goal with Acts II, III and IV is to keep them challenging, but smooth the difficulty ramp out a bit. If a monk or barbarian is geared well enough that they can use a heavily offensive build and murder everything in Act I, they should be able to swap to a more defensive build and do okay in Act II. As they gear up they can begin adjusting back to becoming offensive in Act II, at which point they can jump into Act III with a focus on defense, and so on. Difficulty certainly ties into itemization, encounter and enemy tuning, and class balance, and all of these things together are going to paint a more reasonable difficulty curve as you hit Inferno in 1.0.3."

Paying for Your Mistakes

+ Show +

Ever to those mad corpse runs, finally flipping some tables and saying "Stuff it!" to elites and champion packs? Well now, you might have to watch your bank.

"... we evaluated a number of new death mechanics, such as just allowing the resurrection timer to increase even higher, disallowing resurrection during boss fights, or putting a debuff on you when you resurrect (such as reduced combat effectiveness)."

Various ideas and mechanics were thrown around until Blizzard decided to go with something more simple and close to home, the Repair Cost.

"We’re currently evaluating repair costs between 4x and 6x their current values."

Whoa, Whoa, Nice Shootin’ Tex

+ Show +

Attack speed's associated bugs will be fixed in the upcoming patch. (Crazerk, this might relate to your DPS loss bug :P) as well as lowering the overall effectiveness of the stat.

"There are two different solutions we’re considering to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed. The first is to simply reduce the value on all the items to their desired values. In general our desire is to never change items as that makes them feel less concrete, but the upside is you would still be able to look at an item and know exactly what you are getting. The other approach is to change the formula used for attack speed aggregation so that stacking attack speed from multiple slots suffers from diminishing returns. The downside of that approach is that it introduces yet another hidden modifier on an item property (and many people dislike hidden modifiers), and complicates the already difficult decision of item gearing."

Just Three Two Easy Payments

+ Show +

Here is the changed in prices for the Gem crafting update in 1.0.3:

Gem Quality	Previous Cost	New Cost
Flawed	3 Chipped + 500 gold	2 Chipped + 10 gold
Normal	3 Flawed + 750 gold	2 Flawed + 25 gold
Flawless	3 Normal + 1250 gold	2 Normal + 40 gold
Perfect	3 Flawless + 2000 gold + 1 Page	2 Flawless + 55 gold + 1 Page
Radiant	3 Perfect + 3500 gold + 2 Pages	2 Perfect + 70 gold + 2 Pages
Square	3 Radiant + 7500 gold + 1 Tome	2 Radiant + 85 gold + 1 Tome
Flawless Square	3 Square + 20,000 gold + 2 Tomes	2 square + 100 gold + 2 Tomes

"The gem combine costs for Perfect Square and above will remain unchanged."

Nerf Them, Buff Me

+ Show +

"Class tuning is not a major focus for 1.0.3. There will be a small number of skills changes, but for the most part we want people to continue experimenting and enjoy their skills for a while. Our goal was and continues to be build diversity, and though we see quite a bit of build diversity, we think we can do much better. Class tuning will be an ongoing process, and we’re targeting the 1.1 patch for most class tweaks, with a focus on punching build diversity up a few more notches."

But What About…

+ Show +

"While these are a few of the larger systems adjustments we’re making, the 1.0.3 patch will include many fixes, quality of life enhancements, Auction House improvements, and other changes. We hope you look forward to the patch as much as we do getting it out there, and again we appreciate your continued feedback. See you in-game!"

Reddit's AMA

Today on Reddit the Senior game designers for Blizzard did a AMA. Here are the points covered:

+ Show +

General

• There could be an "auto-skip cinematics" options added in the future.
• There will likely be an "invisibility mode" for the friend list in a future patch.
• Blizzard are looking into adding an option that will filter out white items on the ground.
• There will be more ingame hints added that point to the existence of Elective Mode.
• Players have discovered all zones in the game.
• Custom chat channels are in the works.

Items

• The color of Health Potions, Gems, Tomes and Pages will change in a future patch.
• When Legendaries get an upgrade in a future patch they'll have many interesting proc abilities.
• There is no elemental damage because players would just use the one that has the highest DPS. The only elemental damage type that survived is Cold - it has lowered damage but chills enemies. It's also the least used damage type.
• There are currently restrictions that don't let you dye Legendary items. Blizzard are looking into the Tech issue of solving that.
• The Staff of Herding and all components required to craft it will be made to stand out WAY more in the inventory in 1.0.3.
• The stat for increasing the potency of Health Globes might also affect Potions as well in the future.
• Life Steal and Life on Hit
• Life on Hit is roughly 3 times stronger than Life Steal but doesn't scale as well. Life Steal is tuned for DPS that players would hit months after release.
• Life Steal is made to, someday, make you feel like you're breaking the game.
• If in a few months Life Steal is still not used enough it'll receive changes.
• Life Steal is also tuned for multiple targets taken into account.

Difficulty

• Whimsyshire will also be affected by the incoming difficulty changes in 1.0.3. For Hell Whimsyshire counts as Act IV and for Inferno as Act III/IV.
• In a future patch bosses will give better loot the first time you kill them in a higher difficulty (not going to be in 1.0.3).
• Crafting
• The Blacksmith crafting will have its prices decreased in 1.0.3.
• Blizzard like the idea of adding gems into the Blacksmith's crafts in the future.
• Crafting is not meant to have better items than monster drops or AH. It's just another gold outlet. With the price reduction in 1.0.3 though things should get "a little more interesting".
• Blacksmith and Jeweler recipes drop only in Inferno. As people get more into that difficulty and Blizzard get more results to monitor they might considere increasing their drop rates.
• Monsters
• In a future patch Shielding enemies will cast their shields less frequently.
• In a future patch rares with Invulnerable Minions will have their health decreased.
• Some fleeing monsters will flee less in 1.0.3 so that enrage timers don't become a big issue for players.

Auction House

• Blizzard are considering adding the RMAH to Hardcore mode.
• Commodities have been down because of flawed design. It made players spam the Search button.
• You will be able to cancel auctions in patch 1.0.3 (99% sure).
• There are currently no plans to let players choose how long they're putting items up for.
• The Auction House has no effect on drop rates. They are actually tuned for players that will never use the Auction House.
• The game was tuned without the Auction House because there weren't enough players to make it work during internal testing.
• Item comparison in the Auction House window will be added in the future.

Classes

• Class sigils from the pre-release promotional site should start showing up in the next couple weeks.
• Some Demon Hunter abilities will be buffed to promote build diversity (not in 1.0.3).
• The least used skills at level 60 are Energy Twister, Exploding Palm, Sacrifice, Ancient Spear and Strafe.

Magic Find

• Magic Find works exactly the same way as it did in Diablo II.

PvP

• There will only be Arena in the PvP patch.
• There might be dueling at some point in the future.

Hardcore

• 4.1% of characters are Hardcore.
• Every design decision takes Hardcore into account.
• Hardcore Characters Class Breakdown:
• Level 46-50: Barbarian: 25.86% * Monk: 23.90% * Demon Hunter: 18.47% * Wizard: 16.96% * Witch Doctor: 14.81%
• Level 60: Barbarian: 22.67% * Monk: 21.83% * Demon Hunter: 21.04% * Wizard: 19.23% * Witch Doctor: 15.23%

That about does it, who else is looking forward to these changes? I personally am quite satisfied as I will be able to complete Act 2 on my Monk! ^^

Sources:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262...eview-6_6_2012 || http://www.diablofans.com/news/1236-...lert-linkedin/

Done By: System

+ [28/05/12 - Game Design Update] +

There was a pretty big blue post made on the official forums today, and it talks about many of the issues that a lot of players are up in arms against at the moment, a very interesting read:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6018173

Important stuff from the article:

Interesting Stats:

+ Show +

• On average players have created 3 characters each.
• 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30.
• 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty.
• 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character.
• The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal
• The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)
• The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter:
• Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

Skill nerfs and balance

+ Show +

• Some skills were too effective, and were hence nerfed.It's okay to be op to a certain extent, but not game breaking (like the ones nerfed), These will have to be corrected.
• If a skill is deemed absolutely necessary to survive at a certain difficulty level, then in goes against the basic design principle i.e to promote diversity.
• The nerf caught some people unaware, next time there will be a post on the forum called "upcoming changes" before the nerf.

Inferno difficulty

+ Show +

• Keeping an eye on inferno difficulty, it is supposed to be hard, but it is a bit harder than expected, as the damage your dealt is very "spikey".
• Shifting focus from survivability to efficiently dealing damage, in voluntarily placed risky situations.
• A lot of people are attempting inferno without proper gear.

Itemization

+ Show +

• People are comparing high level blues to low level legendaries, and claiming imba.
• Will be exposing items of level 63 in the next patch (1.03) to help people compare items.(i.e blue level 63, vs legendary item level 60)....I dont really understand what this means.
• That said, Legendary items will be buffed coming in PvP patch(1.1), will not affect previously found items.
• Long term goal:Increasing affix diversity and legendary bonuses.

Blacksmith,crafting and Gems

+ Show +

• Blacksmith is an alternative source for upgrades, use him to bridge itemization gaps at level 60.
• Working on reducing costs for training blacksmith, through both pages and gold.
• Reduce the cost of combining gems, maybe use two gems to make a greater one, upto flawless square.

Patches

+ Show +

• Patch 1.02 will come up next week, will mostly be service issues.
• 1.03 a little bit later, is the real balance patch.
• 1.1 will be PvP patch.
• Looking to open up a PTR soon to test PvP.
• For changes to the game,the game will depend on patching primarily, for urgent needs, hotfixes will be used.

Done By: Daboo

[Cyanide]

Cyanide's reserved post 3

[ZiggyD]

The message from Mike was interesting in a boring sort of way. Interesting because no blue posts for days then a wall of text. Boring because it's mainly intended to pique interest to get people through the dull period between news. Much of muchness really.

Quick Comments

Cyanide:

kinda agree with you there.

[ToRFutureBoy]

Agreed ZiggyD....

Not much happening obviously. I can relate to the "item hunt" issue. I have been running act 1 inferno for some time now....act 2 way too hard! Still!

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Play in 4 players groups, it's easier, and go Asmodans Siege catapults in Act 3

[Cyanide]

edit edit edit

[ZiggyD]

You should make a post in the thread to bump it up when you make an update!

Quick Comments

Cyanide:

slipped my mind :P

[Cyanide]

Updated New Character Profile Pages! Now you can view your heroes, followers, and even your friend's heroes from your profile page.

[yongming]

lol really?

[nirvAnA]

sick improvement, loving the new UI!!!!!! (from the screenshots at least)

now to implement something useful please, like modifiers in the AH when looking at potential new gear - like how they look before you equip them in your inventory. Or even better, a AH search parameter / feature that sorts gear by dmg increase since thats ultimately just what people care about.

[Cyanide]

Updated OP.

Patch 1.0.4 is ringing in some huge changes. I am particularly looking forward to the class changes and legendary item changes.

This looks to be the make or break patch in my opinion. People's patience are running thin, and if these changes aren't good enough, I think they will bleed even more players (especially with Guild Wars 2 just around the corner).

Quite looking forward to these changes that are coming... Soon™

[Cyanide]

First of many developer blogs to come.

Lots of positives from this update. They are BUFFING many skills, they are improving legendaries (more to come on that), they are improving 2-handers (always felt they needed a massive boost).

The only thing I do not agree with is that they are NERFING mobs again. I find the fun is in having challenging mobs (many may disagree with me), the caveat here is of course, ensuring the appropriate level of reward for the level of challenge it provides. Blizzard didn't do a very good job of doing that in my opinion. My point is, don't nerf inferno again, make it more rewarding instead. However, I think that is tied to the loot diversity that they can come up with (which they are still in the process of perfecting i.e. Legendaries)

Nonetheless, Blizzard is listening. Looks promising for now, but I don't want to have my hopes up too much.

[Cyanide]

HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE news.

Legendaries are getting a really significant boost.

+ [Called it!!] +

Originally Posted by Cyanide

I'd rather magic find be a "nice to have stat" as opposed to a "must have stat".

Here's where they tried with item diversity, and failed.
2.1% Chance to stun on hit
23.5% chance to inflict 654-1249 Bleed damage over 5s

Effects like this HAD the potential, but they screwed it up big time because the effects are ignored. They do too little. I'd rather have 60 All resist then a 2.1% chance to stun.
I'd rather have 50 Dex over a chance to inflict bleed damage.

What they want is something that really affects your decision in gear min/maxing FOR FUN AND SMASHING MONSTER FACES IN. Not for maximizing your efficiency in farming.

Here's what I think is good for item diversity.

10% Chance to proc chain lightning that deals 6000 damage, can chain up to 3 targets and damage is split equally over the targets.

It's just an example.

But it's things like this that make me go "hmmm, do I want a really fun proc or do I want 200 dex on my weapon? Maybe if I go IAS heavy, I can maximize my proc chances! Cool, i'll do a IAS build around this weapon"

Legendary crafting recipes have sky-rocketed even before this blog update. Brimstones are going to be even more expensive, kudos to market speculators who bought a ton of them in advance.

The blog touches on many fantastic things, but there is 2 sides to every coin.

Changes WILL NOT be retroactive. That means that my legendary pieces will be crap compared to the new ones, I wear 4 myself Time to start farming again.

Another thing that will be very important in my opinion is, the issue of gold inflation. Because of the botters, we have seen items going for obscene amount of prices. I'm going to guess that a decent pair of new Fire Walkers are going to go in access of 100m unless they start to flood the market enough. But even then, the market can be controlled. Your 100m gold will never be able to cut it anymore.

[Cyanide]

Barbarian Preview added.

[yongming]

changes are way too drastic. making even clearer that they release an unfinished game. or maybe its a sign of desperation to attract those who have long quit the game.

[nirvAnA]

whoa those legendary updates in the OP are OP! omg!!!!!

[Cyanide]

Wizard preview updated!

Originally Posted by yongming

changes are way too drastic. making even clearer that they release an unfinished game. or maybe its a sign of desperation to attract those who have long quit the game.

Drastic is good, and yes you have a point. Clearly, internal testers aren't enough, the player base is like a fine toothed comb picking through every detail of the game. That said, the changes are really promising.

Ultimately, this is timed to coincide with GW2 (which i'm thinking of getting).

[Cyanide]

Monk preview updated.

So little information. T_T But the new Exploding Palm looks soooo freaking sick. I really hope there are more changes other than spirit spenders.

What I really wanted to see were rune changes across the board, a lot of the runes are really lacklustre in my opinion. This is a preview only though, the patch notes will be more detailed. I'm keeping my fingers cross for a whole slew of sick changes for monks.

Anyway, Demon Hunter and Witch Doctor previews will be released soon, probably in a few hours.

Aaaand, i'm done talking to myself. ^_^

[Highlander]

Witch Doctor changes look like a mixed bag on the overall "Is it a nerf, is it a buff", but I LOVE the ways they are buffing.

I just wanna use pets. I like summoning. Now it looks like I will be able to.

Now I need a EHP calc for pets tho. Gotta respec!

Quick Comments

Cyanide:

haha, yeah, looking forward to the full patch notes, really keeping my fingers crossed