Upcoming Change to Trail of Cinders and Patch 1.0.5, +x% Elemental Damage Mechanic, Diablo III Web APIs, Inferno Booster Pack C

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.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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.



+x% Elemental Damage Mechanic

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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.



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.


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