Closed Beta Hotfixes - Updated 1/24

Several more hotfixes were made to the Beta and PTR environments. The PTR notes are the same, but less.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

Below you will find a list of hotfixes recently applied or coming soon to the Closed Beta that address various bugs and mechanic tweaks.

These hotfixes should not require you to download a new patch for the PTR. Some of the hotfixes below will go live the moment they are implemented while others may require the restart of the game to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch. Also note that changes to certain abilities will not be reflected in its tooltip until a patch is issued.

Last Updated - January 24th. Items with an asterisk(*) are most recent.

[UPCOMING HOTFIXES]
There are no upcoming hotfixes at this time.

[LIVE HOTFIXES]

General:

• Legendary drop rates from monsters have been doubled.*
• Legendary drop rates from Kadala have been decreased.*
• Rift Guardians now drop Blood Shards and have a chance to drop Forgotten Souls for level 61+ players.*
• Monster damage has been increased across all levels.*
• Splash damage will no longer unintentionally proc certain powers.*
• Hellfire plans no longer cost Blood Shards and should now cost gold.
• Monster density in Act I has been adjusted.
• An issue where crafting certain items caused the server to crashed has been resolved.
• Resolved an issue where the proc from Odyn Son could proc from itself.
• Lorath Nahr no longer has a vendor list.
• An error will no longer occur when crafting Archon items.
• The combat AI for NPCs has received an optimization pass.

Items:

• Thundergod's Vigor: Now has a short internal cooldown.*
• Nemesis Bracers: Bracers will now only generate a single pack of enemies when a shrine is triggered.

Monk:

• Serenity - Tranquility: An error will no longer occur when a player takes damage while Serenity - Tranquility is active.
• Fists of Thunder - Static Charge: Will no longer incorrectly proc off of DoT damage.

Wizard

• Slow Time - Stretch Time: Multiple Stretch Time buffs can no longer be stacked, and a player may only benefit from a total 10% bonus Attack Speed from this ability.*
• Magic Missile - Conflagrate: Corrected an issue that would occasionally cause the game to crash.

Blizz Wants Feedback on 2H Weapons

After successfully doubling the drop rates of Legendary ites on Beta Travis Day now asks what could change regarding 2-Handed Weapons.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hey folks hope you are enjoying the recent changes. 

I look forward to seeing more feedback in regards to how the drop rates feel once people have more time to play with them. 

For Drothvader and Starbird. I dug into your accounts and characters with the help of one of our awesome programmers. The data that we pulled up showed that you guys were in fact at the extremely unfortunate end of the bad rng scale. However in looking into the system, while we did verify it was working, I also decided the extent to which you went without seeing an item shouldn't have been acceptable and made some adjustments to our safety net system. Again for clarity, 99% of you should never even run into this issue, ideally the drop rates are rewarding enough that we never have to step in and over ride the random number generation. However it's also important to us that noone has a bad experience with the game just because "they were really unlucky" and that's the sole intent of the back end system. 

Have fun storming the castle.

Noice! Thank you for the communication.

PS - What are your thoughts on 2h's vs 1h's at the moment?

We are going to make some adjustments to 2handers, they could stand to be better. Not sure how much of a change we will end up making but we agree they are a bit lack luster atm compared to the 1h counterparts.

Lets dig into the 2h complaints for a second. It seems to had discussed 2h vs 1h at one point in a previous design meeting and as a result investigated them relative to each other. The end result was that 2h are actually in a good place relative to 1h.

So I'm curious what specific 2h vs 1h comparisons are people referring to? Are we talking 2h staves for Wizards and WDs vs 1h + orb/mojo? Or are we talking 2h axe vs 2 1h axes?

Incoming Paragon XP Changes

Nevalistis hinted and then Wyatt Cheng explained some upcoming changes to Paragon XP farming rates.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We agree that Paragon leveling right now is a bit too slow. We're currently in the process of iterating on Paragon level experience and how much is needed to gain additional levels. The plan is to reduce the amount necessary to level, and in addition, increasing the amount of experience gained per monster kill.

Nev, I'm not encouraged by you saying 'a bit' here.

"A bit" wasn't really the best phrase for me to use here. It's an adjective phrase that works its way into my speech too frequently, and I didn't catch myself here. Sorry about that. =(

In addition, I want to clarify that I misread how this tuning was being approached, though the overall goal is the same (i.e. quicker Paragon leveling). The amount of experience needed to gain Paragon levels was actually doubled - however, experience gained per monster kill was drastically increased and outweighs this by a significant margin. To give you a rough estimate, overall you should find that Paragon leveling will be approximately six times faster. I also want to stress that this is an overarching change, and you'll find that this change impacts the speed of gaining higher Paragon levels more than it does lower ones.

Will this then mean that paragon EXP currently acquired will result in a lower plvl with the next PTR update due to the requirement doubling?

Paragon level is calculated by raw total experience across all of your characters (with separate pools for Normal and Hardcore), so I don't believe you'll see a drop.

Is this something we will see in the next build or will it be a hotfix?

This will require a patch.

So when you say Paragon leveling is six times faster...six times faster than what? Six times faster than Live?

Six times faster than the current PTR/Beta build. Sorry for not clarifying sooner! It's a little hard to compare this system to the live environment because in the new system, you can surpass Paragon 100. As I mentioned before, it's much easier to notice the increase in leveling speed the higher Paragon level you attain.
*Edit* Also, Wyatt's one-upped me and given much more detailed information here. ;P

---

 

Hey guys I want to provide some clarity as some of the comments here are misinterpreting the change.

You have a Paragon leveling rate that you see now on live. Let's call that the "Live rate"

You have the Paragon leveling rate seen on the PTR, let's call that the "PTR" rate.

You have the new rate that Nevalistis is referring to, we'll call that "Anticipated 2.0" rate

A few important notes.

1. The shape of the leveling curve changes with respect to current Paragon level. PTR rate and Anticipated 2.0 rate are actually very similar at Paragon level 1-50. But if you look at the rate going from paragon 250=>251, Anticipated rate is faster.

2. For those of you datamining, datamining won't tell the whole story on any of this because the XP from monsters changed.

3. XP from monsters has gone up in Anticipated 2.0 because between NV going away and the monster density being lower than the 1.0.8 numbers we want to make sure players who track their XP/hour don't suddenly see a huge drop.

4. When we transition accounts from live to 2.0 when the patch hits, we don't just add up all your paragon levels. We take the total amount of XP you've earned over all the characters on your account, and use that sum to map you onto a paragon level on the new curve.

5. When Nevalistis said Paragon leveling is approximately six times faster this refers purely to PTR and Anticipated 2.0. This is because PTR rates were disproportionately slow. It was taking 60+ hours to earn some of those higher paragon levels, and "six times faster" means it that might be 10 now. Note that this has nothing to do with live.

6. It's hard to compare rates directly between Live, PTR, and Anticipated 2.0 because at the end of the day, Live stops at 100 and PTR/Anticipated 2.0 go forever. I think at the end of the day if you're trying to "be efficient with your time", the important thing to remember is #4 - we don't look at raw levels - we look at your total experience earned, and map that appropriately.

So can you compare XP per monster killed on 1. Live w/ 5 NV stacks vs. 2. Anticipated 2.0?

It varies with level and I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head but our design intent is to offset the loss of XP from 5 stacks and density.

There are many variables at play as well. Adventure Mode has it's own rewards. It's hard to compare Bounty rewards vs. the benefit of a highly optimized/efficient run. There are more events in the game now. The change from 60 to 70. "Difficulty 2.0". All of these factors means it doesn't make sense to do a direct comparison of the XP of any one particular monster - but rather when all factors are put together we don't want XP rates cut in half compared to live. The XP per monster happens to be one of the tuning variables in our toolbox. (Source)

Focused Feedback - Legendary Powers

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In addition to our current Focused Feedback request regarding Infernal Machines, our development team is seeking additional information on another integral part of the Reaper of Souls experience. 

Please note that while we occasionally request players focus on providing specific feedback, all feedback continues to be welcome either via the e-mail provided in your Beta invitation or here on the forums.

Currently, we are looking for detailed feedback regarding:

• Of the Legendary items you've found while playing the beta, which three have been your favorite and why.
• Similarly, of the Legendary items you've found while playing the beta, which three have you liked the least and why.
  • Of these items, how do you feel they could be improved?

Additional notes:

• Please feel free to include Set items in this feedback.
• How you measure worth or value of a Legendary item is completely up to you. What makes a Legendary item one of your favorites may differ from another player, and that’s completely okay. Same applies for the reverse (how you define something as your “least favorite”).
• This discussion isn’t focused on drop rates, but rather the perceived quality of the Legendary items you have found. If posts could stay on topic and not deviate, that would be greatly appreciated!

As we continue with testing, we may require additional testing needs. Keep an eye out for similar threads in the future as these needs arise. We do ask that feedback in this thread stays on topic - unrelated feedback will be appropriately moderated.

Thank you, as always, for your participation!

Design a Legendary: Choose Your Power Results

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Last week, over 19,000 Diablo III players world-wide participated in our Choose Your Power poll. This was the third poll we've held for the "Design a Legendary" project, and it was one that would ultimately determine the unique power of the Legendary Mephisto-themed, one-handed sword we're designing.

Here are the results!

• Legendary Power #1: 14.6%
  • You radiate an aura of Hatred. All monsters near you deal and receive additional damage.
• Legendary Power #2: 19.3%
  • Attacks have a chance on hit to cause your current target to be hated by all nearby enemies, taunting them to attack that target for the duration of the effect.
• Legendary Power #3: 12.8%
  • When you are near death, your hatred for your enemies grows, significantly reducing your resource costs and cooldowns.
• Legendary Power #4: 28.3%
  • Elemental attacks have a chance to trigger one of powerful abilities inspired by the Lord of Hatred himself: Charged Bolt, Poison Nova, and Freezing Skull. Lightning damage has a chance to trigger a Charged Bolt. Poison damage has a chance to trigger Poison Nova. Cold damage has a chance to trigger Freezing Skull.
• Legendary Power #5: 25%
  • Summons an Evil Force to fight alongside the player for a period of time. This force would take the form of a non-attackable melee pet, and it would be possible to potentially have more than one Evil Force active at once.

Taking almost 29% of the global vote, our winning legendary power is: #4!

"Elemental attacks have a chance to trigger one of powerful abilities inspired by the Lord of Hatred himself: Charged Bolt, Poison Nova, and Freezing Skull. Lightning damage has a chance to trigger a Charged Bolt. Poison damage has a chance to trigger Poison Nova. Cold damage has a chance to trigger Freezing Skull." 

From here, designers Travis Day and John Yang will flesh out the rest of item's stat budget, including the power itself (adding actual damage values and making slight adjustments as needed). Stay tuned to diablo3.com for an updated tooltip once that process is complete as well as a quick Q&A with Travis and John on how this particular part of Legendary item design works.

As with our last vote, thanks to each and every nephalem who've participated in some shape, way, or form in this project so far. We hope you're enjoying it as much as we are, and look forward to revealing the final, complete Legendary soon!

P.S. - Don't forget to participate in our Choose Your Name vote!

RoS Collector's Edition Box

A beautiful picture showing RoS Collector's Edition Box was shared on twitter today by /r/Diablo's mod Thunderclaww. Let us know how you like the visual and if this is how you imagined it!