I find this pretty peculiar aswell. The total number now is 12 new sets of portraits (1 confirmed is the season journey one) for a total of 72 progress-themed portraits. In addition, there's the class-specific ones + the overwatch portrait for a total of 79 new portraits uploaded to the PTR.
I bet they are for the next patch, or the patch after that. My best guess is that they are going to be implemented in some new challenge-based game content. Blizzard has had a habit of uploading textures that we've yet to see ingame although they were uploaded years ago, but the sheer number of portraits should indicate that this isn't just some test textures or placeholders.
If you look at this image posted back in march, it shows items that were included in both season 3, season 4 and some that are to be included in season 5.
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Did it solo with helltooth/chicken WD on first attempt. Used approx 18-19 minutes. Thx for the guide!
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Meh. Good to se they're taking actions against botters, but none of my clanmates have been banned and I know for certain that some of them have been botting almost 24/7 since the season start
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The XP part of the support-builds are indeed dead, and will not provide any real value. The support-builds however, are still kicking. Most parties who have completed GR 80+ have one monk/barb or both in group. Theres a couple of groups without zdps entirely, but it'll be interesting to see how this develops after the next PTR patch.
But, meta aside, the game still lags like sh*t when you push GRs in group.
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You should (obviously) choose one of this seasons journey reward sets:
I did mastery with invoker in 2 attempts. Haven't tried the other ones. The main issue however seems to be doing too much damage to complete them. Also, the monk one did seem somewhat difficult according to Quin69's video. You can find videos for each of them on youtube.
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The new system is fine. It doesn't penalize anyone, neither the noobs nor the leaderboard hunters.
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There has been numerous occations where things have been nerfed on PTR, never to be upped anywhere near it's previous glory once the patch hits live servers. First tweaks are usually the final ones. They tend to do the items first, then the skills in a later patch and the last PTR patch is usally 90% set for release. Wouldn't get my hopes up for LoN. Wyatt already butchered and buried this set in a blue post. T8 "fun" farm build at best.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the Season Journey concept introduced with the current season, but I thought it was way too easy to accomplish. I completed the Guardian chapter 15 days after season start, and that was only because I delayed the TX rift clear. I had finished most of the objectives within the first week.
I agree that the lvl 70 hardcore should be removed. It's not a good way to incentivize HC play and when I was done I didn't feel accomplished, I only felt that I had wasted 7 hours on nothing.
For future journeys I'd like to see more variety, in particular I'd like to see more coop-oriented objectives, and that the journey should include more conquests. I'd also like to see conquests give rewards on their own. I still really want to do the kill all bosses in 30 mins on TX conquest, but none of my friends want to do it as it gives nothing, and they're too busy farming and grinding. Conquests should be incentivized as some of them require a party to be able to complete. The portrait reward for completing the Guardian chapter was cool enough, but the other portraits just looked like the designer had a lazy afternoon at work. Not even going to comment on the ugly pet.
Anyway. The journey had a nice balance of things that are progress related, that just needs time, but not necessarily effort to complete and others that made me go out of my normal routine to accomplish (conquests in particular). But as mentioned before, it was too easy to complete. With more focused effort I'd probably finished it within the first week. And I'm no streamer/progamer. I work fulltime, have kids etc, but was still able to complete it in just two weeks.
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Also, people need to understand that catching botters isn't hard. Stopping them in a timely fashin isn't hard either. All it requires is a simple database query. If you look at other competitive videogames, most developers implement a lot of cheat-detecting mechanisms to ban/exclude cheaters. Blizzard however doesn't care. They never did and never will. They'll push the odd banwave now and then, but that's their limit.
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Lol, the Bard class sounded hilarious. Imagine a class weilding guitars and violins, shooting notes and chords ^^
I don't think charms, runes and runewords would bring anything positive to the game. So you get some more stats and powercreep, but ultimately it would end up like every other itemization tweak they do: 1-3 setups is BiS pr. class and everything else is utter sh*t. It doesn't increase the replayability of the game in any way, which is becoming lower and lower for every season they start.
The thing I miss the most right now is more end-game challenges. Pushing GRs is fun, but somewhat tedious now that I've been doing it four seasons straight. Some of this seasons conquests and season journey was a welcome addition and fun to accomplish, but we need more. I think I only have two conquests left, but they're more a matter of priority rather than actual challenge.
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Everyone saying druid isn't represented, do you even remember the skilltree? Look: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/classes/druid.shtml
The elemental skilltree is very similar to some wizard and barbarian skills. The summoning skilltree has some similar skills with DH (Raven, Wolf) and the whole concept is pretty much covered by the WD. The only remaining skilltree is shapeshifting (which I would love to see in D3. Both bear and wolf were super fun post patch 1.10)
If we are to see a druid, I think Shapookia was onto something on the previous page. That his skills would be more plant-like than earth/element type.
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The area is called "The Cesspools".
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Taking into account the wording in the recent blue posts, the minor tweaks in the PTR patch, the fact that the official season 2 end date post came out the same day that the last 2.2 PTR patch notes were published, and that there's traditionally not more than a few days gap between datamining and official notes - my guess is now that the s3 end will be anounced next week and we'll see patch 2.3 go live in the end of august.
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It's true what you say, Gorok. Although I think that this patch is going to be different than the previous as there is a whole lot more to test. I've played during every PTR since the one before S1, but this one has some of the biggest changes to gameplay and itemization we've seen to this point.
I forgot to say in my post that one should always take PTR GR leaderboards with a grain of salt, but regardless of GR progression, the WD is still underperforming compared to other classes. Not by a bit, but by a far amount. As celey stated, I also believe that we'll see another patch and another round of PTR wipe/new season before they make the final adsjustments.
Also, keep in mind that the last PTR patch before S3 was more or less unchanged before live except for the removal of Morticks. If the current PTR patch goes live it will be a disaster.
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I like your optimism, but I am pretty sure we can rule out an August 18th release of 2.3. I won't bother to elaborate, and it's not a gut feeling or anything. Taking a lot of different factors into account I'm fairly certain we won't see 2.3 before the calendar flips to September.
A key factor is the power-gap between characters. WD is still wildly underperforming and i sincerely hope they actually aim to fix it, or alleviate the issues to the extent that it's more or less comparable to other classes. Crusader and DH are also somewhat underperforming, but no biggie for them really as this only affects the top GR clears.
But hey - in this case, I'd love to be wrong
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First of all. It's important that people understand how this works. You can still join your P250+ TX farming friends in a private, multiplayer game with your p0 lvl
1(forgot TVII+ has lvl 70 req) 70 character. The restriction only applies to public games where you play with one or more strangers.It's a nice try from blizzard, but doesn't remedy the problem: Low level or undergeared/inexperienced players being paired with high level, highly skilled players.
This will only apply to season start. Say first 1-2 weeks. Then people will be starting alt toons and you'll have the same problem all over again when their account paragon is 250+ and their newly dinged 70 have <1 hour playtime (or whatever time it took for them to get boosted to 70). Eventually, it will become just as frustrating as it has always been.
I've got the perfect solution though: Make public TVII+ requirements based on individual character GR progression. You can still hop in a game and do (leech) GR 45+ with your mates, or TX with your mates, but you can't join a public TX game with your freshly dinged paragon 250 alt toon before you complete the equivalent GR in a solo game. This should be very easy to implement, can't be "cheated" and will forever lock undergeared players out of the highest diffs.