Update: added additional blue posts responding to the Trail of Cinders post.
Upcoming Change to Trail of Cinders and Patch 1.0.5
It looks like Trail of Cinders will be getting a nerf come 1.0.5. This also means we will be seeing a patch hit before the big 1.1.
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 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.
Agree not a bug a bug is something that is doing something not as intended. It is dealing 1500% damage it is working as it was designed.
The fire on the ground deals damage 5 times a second, and we set a value for how much damage we wanted Trail of Cinders to do in that period of time. Unfortunately, that value was incorrectly added to the individual ticks. So, the amount of damage currently done by each of those 5 ticks is actually the total amount of damage it's supposed to do over the entire second. That part is a bug.
We didn't catch this during testing, which is absolutely our fault. There are still very good reasons for fixing this issue, and they're are outlined in the main post.
My understanding is, you wanted it to do 1500% weapon damage over 3 secs, but actually it was doing 5 times that = 7500% over 3 seconds? So if the initial goal was 1500%, why in the hell you guys throwing out numbers like 300%?
Not quite. =/
We originally wanted Trail of Cinders to deal 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds (or approximately 100% weapon damage each second). What ended up happening, is that -- instead of the rune doing only 100% weapon damage each second -- it now does 100% weapon damage each tick. The fire damage ticks 5 times each second, so 15 ticks for the entire duration of the spell. That's 1500% weapon damage, or 5 times more damage than originally designed.
I know its early days for this game, but I hope that you will allow for some evolution in the characters you guys have made. I mean, why not allow for a switch in playstyle for those that choose it. Since the patch, I have been using TOC as an offensive and putting my char in danger as a result, but its way more fun than keeping my distance.
Please don't set all your ideas in stone yet, there may be much better way to go about it... or at least give us the freedom to choose.
This is definitely feedback I will be relaying back to the developers. Thank you for sharing it.
So the bug is that it's doing more damage per second that as intended? Why don't you jut fix it and leave it at 1500% over 3 seconds? What's the point of bringing it down to 300%?
It was never intended to deal 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds (that's the bug). The actual value we designed for Trail of Cinders in 1.0.4 was 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
whoa, whoa, whoa! you mean the patch notes you released were a lie? http://us.battle.net...7029347#classes
this clearly states 1500%. that means if you didnt intend for it to be 1500% then it was completely untested AND no one checked the patch notes either.
do you have no quality control division? no testers? why the heck are you lieing to us?
The note was written based on incorrect information, yes (which due to the fact that we missed this issue during testing). We've already identified why we missed this issue originally and have improved our processes so that the same issue won't happen again -- both for in terms of testing changes and confirming information put into the patch notes.
Is it a bug that the toottip says 1500% as well?
The tooltip pulls from the actual game data. Since the rune is currently dealing 1500% weapon damage, the tooltip value reflects this.
There are still tooltips in game now that don't accurately reflect the skill they are describing. So, your theory doesn't work.
And blizzard has said that there will be safeguards before. But they continue to fail with this beta product.
And on top of that they pretty much tell us we're all stupid by proclaiming it to be a bug instead of having a bit of integrity and telling the truth.
It actually depends on how the tooltip is set up, and from where its pulling its data. In the case of Trail of Cinders, the tooltip is displaying 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds because that's how much damage the rune is currently doing; the values in the tooltip are pulling that information directly from the game (i.e we didn't manually update the tooltip in 1.0.4).
Regardless, if we just wanted to nerf Trail of Cinders, we'd just say that we were nerfing it. We've made similar announcements in the past. This particular change is the result of a bug fix, however; if we called it something other than a bug fix, then we'd be lying.
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.
Diablo III Web APIs
Diablo III's web API has been active for a few weeks now, and Blizzard has posted an update.
With the recent release of character profiles on the Diablo III community website, we’ve also introduced new Diablo III Community Platform APIs. These APIs allow fansite creators and other community developers to access the same sort of game data available on our profile pages – along with a little extra.
What’s New?
The new APIs we've released fall into two categories: dynamic data and static game data.
Dynamic Data
The new dynamic data APIs include Career Profiles and Hero Profiles, which cover information that changes regularly as people play the game.
Career Profiles are high-level summaries of a player’s accomplishments, and are associated with a game account. Here, you’ll find a hero list, fallen hero list, details on the player’s artisans, and information on game progress (such as overall quest completion).
Hero Profiles contain hero-specific information, such as equipped items, skills, base attributes, game progression information, and follower details.
Static Game Data
The second category of APIs – static game data – includes Item, Follower, and Artisan APIs. Data provided by these APIs doesn't generally change, and when it does, it’s generally accompanied with a game patch.
Item information contains everything you need to know about an item. At this time, we are providing information for generated items – items that are dropped or crafted in-game.
Follower information allows you to get detailed skill information.
Artisan information allows you to get detailed information on what an Artisan has available at each tier, including the recipes that can be learned and information about the recipes’ requirements.
Check out the DIII Community Platform API forum for more information, including API documentation and examples of how to reference them.
Bullshit, how you gonna try to say that it was a bug, the damn patch notes noted 1500%, that's not a damn bug, maybe a mistake, or maybe they didn't realize that the majority of DH's would take advantage of this, but don't call it a damn bug!!!!!
I normally don't get mad but that's a damn slap in the face!!
Bullshit, how you gonna try to say that it was a bug, the damn patch notes noted 1500%, that's not a damn bug, maybe a mistake, or maybe they didn't realize that the majority of DH's would take advantage of this, but don't call it a damn bug!!!!!
I normally don't get mad but that's a damn slap in the face!!
In this thread, people think Blizzard starts with patch notes, then works backwards.
Meanwhile in Completely Impossible Land:
Design Team: "We need to boost ToC's damage. Tell the DB team to make ToC do 100% weapon damage"
DB Team: "We need to change that value to 100. Tell the docs team to update the notes for ToC"
Docs Team: "We need to update ToC's damage. It's 1500% now? Ok, that's what's going in the notes"
... a few days after release...
Design Team: "ToC seems to be doing a crapton more damage than it should. Did the DB change it to 100% damage per second or what?"
DB Team: "... wait... per second? We thought you meant per tick."
Players: "Gosh. What a silly mistake. Thanks for giving us a heads up. brb, changing my build"
1500% looked dodgy when I first read it... still don't see how they missed that when they wrote the patch notes but ah well. So long as they don't nerf whirlwind barbs...
D3 team is incompetance. I am sure they are non-gamer. If they have actually play the game, they will know how stupid the game is. They have no idea what is fun for gamers, and all they do is dictate how one should play the game.
Sure, they have access to the database and can easy "roll" perfect items and just cruise through act 3/4, but what about the rest of us
I think I'm starting to lose a bit of perspective on their game design. They say "we want you to feel overpowered", yet everything that feels powerful gets cut down. What needs to happen for most of us to feel overpowered? 20 more Dex? 5% more Crit?
id be pretty upset if i didnt stop playin my dh when i realized theres no survivability in inferno without going to totally unreasonable lengths to boost your resists/armor/loh.
or well kinda stop playing when i got bored of running act 3 :\
Yeah, I don't buy the fact that it's an 'unintended bug' either. I believe they very much intended it to do 1500% damage, it's just they found out that 1500% damage over that short a period ended up being way too powerful. Instead of admitting that they overtuned the ability intentionally and are now bringing it in line, they're calling it a bug that they somehow missed.
If it was always supposed to do 300% damage and not 1500%, and the tooltip accurately reflects what the ability actually does, it would have been noticed immediately when they originally changed it and would have been fixed immediately. The difference is too blatant to not notice, it stands out like a soar thumb. What actually happened is it was changed to 1500%, they tested it a little and thought, 'yeah, this seems good' and rolled with it. After the fact when every DH started using is when they realized, 'holy crap, we really overcompensated with this ability. However, instead of turning around a week and a half later and calling it a 'nerf' lets just claim it was an unintentional bug to save face.
I agree with other people's statements. Just own up to it. Everyone makes mistakes. So an ability was overtuned and needs to be fixed. It happens all the time in League of Legends and they freely admit to it. ToC is too powerful and needs to be toned down. I get it. But don't play it off as some kind of unexpected 'bug'. That's just insulting to many people's intelligence that know better.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Oh pitiful shadow lost in the darkness,
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps... it is time to die.
Wow. The amount of community backlash for such a minor error is overwhelming. Particularly, the arguing the semantics of "bug" or, let's say, "screw up" is just ridiculous. Only half-assed comprehending the first paragaph of the original Blizzard post should convey, regardless of semantics, that the change was unintended.
Also, building your character completely around a new balance change (or any single skill for that matter) is just setting yourself for heartache. This game is actively patched for balance. If you've played any online game in the last five years where the core of the multiplayer component is to compare e-peens, then you should be up to speed on this style of patching cycle: Is it OP? Nerf it. Is it weak sauce? Buff it.
I know you may say "That's not all! They've made TONS of mistakes!" The truth is, those of us still paying attention haven't stopped playing their game, and thankfully, they haven't stopped paying attention to us.
It's not the fact that it's getting nerfed from 1500% to 300% that bothers me. What bothers me is the fact they're trying to pass it off as a bug instead of a legitimate mistake.
Though I'll admit, there really was no way for Blizzard to not upset people with this. If they come out and say "it's a bug", it just looks like they think we're idiots because to me, it's too obvious that it wasn't. (and if it truly was a bug that needed fixing, then it just shows the incompetence of the people that let it slip through. I for one don't think they are that incompetent). However, if they come out and say, "We overcompensated and are nerfing ToC next patch, so be ready for that" then the entire community starts crying "WTF!? Nerfs already, it's barely been out a week!"
I for one am an advocate of owning up to one's own mistakes though. I do it, many other game developers do it, I personally would appreciate it if the Diablo team would do it. And many times, they have already. Why this particular instance is different, I don't know. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is they didn't want to call it a 'nerf' but rather a 'bug that needs fixed' in an attempt to make them not seem like the bad guys for changing it from 1500 to 300. I just don't buy that. I don't even mind them calling it a 'fix' because it probably does need fixing. Just don't call it a bug when it really isn't.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Oh pitiful shadow lost in the darkness,
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps... it is time to die.
Earthquake is a two minute cooldown to do 2000% weapon damage over 8s, and you really thought it was intended to do 1500% weapon damage over 3s for an 8 discipline cost on no cooldown? Are you guys insane? Unless you want a one minute cooldown on your trail of cinders there is no way its close to balanced with other people.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Upcoming Change to Trail of Cinders and Patch 1.0.5
It looks like Trail of Cinders will be getting a nerf come 1.0.5. This also means we will be seeing a patch hit before the big 1.1.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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.
Agree not a bug a bug is something that is doing something not as intended. It is dealing 1500% damage it is working as it was designed.
The fire on the ground deals damage 5 times a second, and we set a value for how much damage we wanted Trail of Cinders to do in that period of time. Unfortunately, that value was incorrectly added to the individual ticks. So, the amount of damage currently done by each of those 5 ticks is actually the total amount of damage it's supposed to do over the entire second. That part is a bug.
We didn't catch this during testing, which is absolutely our fault. There are still very good reasons for fixing this issue, and they're are outlined in the main post.
My understanding is, you wanted it to do 1500% weapon damage over 3 secs, but actually it was doing 5 times that = 7500% over 3 seconds? So if the initial goal was 1500%, why in the hell you guys throwing out numbers like 300%?
Not quite. =/
We originally wanted Trail of Cinders to deal 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds (or approximately 100% weapon damage each second). What ended up happening, is that -- instead of the rune doing only 100% weapon damage each second -- it now does 100% weapon damage each tick. The fire damage ticks 5 times each second, so 15 ticks for the entire duration of the spell. That's 1500% weapon damage, or 5 times more damage than originally designed.
I know its early days for this game, but I hope that you will allow for some evolution in the characters you guys have made. I mean, why not allow for a switch in playstyle for those that choose it. Since the patch, I have been using TOC as an offensive and putting my char in danger as a result, but its way more fun than keeping my distance.
Please don't set all your ideas in stone yet, there may be much better way to go about it... or at least give us the freedom to choose.
This is definitely feedback I will be relaying back to the developers. Thank you for sharing it.
So the bug is that it's doing more damage per second that as intended? Why don't you jut fix it and leave it at 1500% over 3 seconds? What's the point of bringing it down to 300%?
It was never intended to deal 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds (that's the bug). The actual value we designed for Trail of Cinders in 1.0.4 was 300% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
whoa, whoa, whoa! you mean the patch notes you released were a lie?
http://us.battle.net...7029347#classes
this clearly states 1500%. that means if you didnt intend for it to be 1500% then it was completely untested AND no one checked the patch notes either.
do you have no quality control division? no testers? why the heck are you lieing to us?
The note was written based on incorrect information, yes (which due to the fact that we missed this issue during testing). We've already identified why we missed this issue originally and have improved our processes so that the same issue won't happen again -- both for in terms of testing changes and confirming information put into the patch notes.
Is it a bug that the toottip says 1500% as well?
The tooltip pulls from the actual game data. Since the rune is currently dealing 1500% weapon damage, the tooltip value reflects this.
There are still tooltips in game now that don't accurately reflect the skill they are describing. So, your theory doesn't work.
And blizzard has said that there will be safeguards before. But they continue to fail with this beta product.
And on top of that they pretty much tell us we're all stupid by proclaiming it to be a bug instead of having a bit of integrity and telling the truth.
It actually depends on how the tooltip is set up, and from where its pulling its data. In the case of Trail of Cinders, the tooltip is displaying 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds because that's how much damage the rune is currently doing; the values in the tooltip are pulling that information directly from the game (i.e we didn't manually update the tooltip in 1.0.4).
Regardless, if we just wanted to nerf Trail of Cinders, we'd just say that we were nerfing it. We've made similar announcements in the past. This particular change is the result of a bug fix, however; if we called it something other than a bug fix, then we'd be lying.
+x% Elemental Damage Mechanic
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
So, really basic example:
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.
Diablo III Web APIs
Diablo III's web API has been active for a few weeks now, and Blizzard has posted an update.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
What’s New?
The new APIs we've released fall into two categories: dynamic data and static game data.
Dynamic Data
The new dynamic data APIs include Career Profiles and Hero Profiles, which cover information that changes regularly as people play the game.
The second category of APIs – static game data – includes Item, Follower, and Artisan APIs. Data provided by these APIs doesn't generally change, and when it does, it’s generally accompanied with a game patch.
Diablo III Inferno Booster Pack Giveaway
Our weekly Inferno booster pack giveaway is currently going until Monday! Make sure to check out the official contest thread for information on the prize on how to enter.
I normally don't get mad but that's a damn slap in the face!!
Read the entire post and THEN reply.
Meanwhile in Completely Impossible Land:
Design Team: "We need to boost ToC's damage. Tell the DB team to make ToC do 100% weapon damage"
DB Team: "We need to change that value to 100. Tell the docs team to update the notes for ToC"
Docs Team: "We need to update ToC's damage. It's 1500% now? Ok, that's what's going in the notes"
... a few days after release...
Design Team: "ToC seems to be doing a crapton more damage than it should. Did the DB change it to 100% damage per second or what?"
DB Team: "... wait... per second? We thought you meant per tick."
Players: "Gosh. What a silly mistake. Thanks for giving us a heads up. brb, changing my build"
Sure, they have access to the database and can easy "roll" perfect items and just cruise through act 3/4, but what about the rest of us
300 % damage is nowhere near a 1500 % damage error. just admit it wasnt tested properly.
Wow you just made my day with that one.
Weird. :/
Ha. Bagstone.
they did
you're bad at reading
or well kinda stop playing when i got bored of running act 3 :\
If it was always supposed to do 300% damage and not 1500%, and the tooltip accurately reflects what the ability actually does, it would have been noticed immediately when they originally changed it and would have been fixed immediately. The difference is too blatant to not notice, it stands out like a soar thumb. What actually happened is it was changed to 1500%, they tested it a little and thought, 'yeah, this seems good' and rolled with it. After the fact when every DH started using is when they realized, 'holy crap, we really overcompensated with this ability. However, instead of turning around a week and a half later and calling it a 'nerf' lets just claim it was an unintentional bug to save face.
I agree with other people's statements. Just own up to it. Everyone makes mistakes. So an ability was overtuned and needs to be fixed. It happens all the time in League of Legends and they freely admit to it. ToC is too powerful and needs to be toned down. I get it. But don't play it off as some kind of unexpected 'bug'. That's just insulting to many people's intelligence that know better.
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps...
it is time to die.
Also, building your character completely around a new balance change (or any single skill for that matter) is just setting yourself for heartache. This game is actively patched for balance. If you've played any online game in the last five years where the core of the multiplayer component is to compare e-peens, then you should be up to speed on this style of patching cycle: Is it OP? Nerf it. Is it weak sauce? Buff it.
I know you may say "That's not all! They've made TONS of mistakes!" The truth is, those of us still paying attention haven't stopped playing their game, and thankfully, they haven't stopped paying attention to us.
/endsoapboxrant
Agreed I love the current TOC hate to see it changed.
Though I'll admit, there really was no way for Blizzard to not upset people with this. If they come out and say "it's a bug", it just looks like they think we're idiots because to me, it's too obvious that it wasn't. (and if it truly was a bug that needed fixing, then it just shows the incompetence of the people that let it slip through. I for one don't think they are that incompetent). However, if they come out and say, "We overcompensated and are nerfing ToC next patch, so be ready for that" then the entire community starts crying "WTF!? Nerfs already, it's barely been out a week!"
I for one am an advocate of owning up to one's own mistakes though. I do it, many other game developers do it, I personally would appreciate it if the Diablo team would do it. And many times, they have already. Why this particular instance is different, I don't know. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is they didn't want to call it a 'nerf' but rather a 'bug that needs fixed' in an attempt to make them not seem like the bad guys for changing it from 1500 to 300. I just don't buy that. I don't even mind them calling it a 'fix' because it probably does need fixing. Just don't call it a bug when it really isn't.
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps...
it is time to die.