DiabloFans

[Datamined] Collector's Edition Imperius Wings

Some small, but pretty interesting strings crossed our eyes in the latest patch datamine. While we can't make any concrete conclusions from strings only, they are worth noticing.

• x1_ImperiusWingsBuff_name - Collectors Edition Buff
• x1_AngelWings_Imperius - Wings of Valor

• x1_AngelWings_Imperius - "With valor, all things become possible. Strike with every ounce of righteous wrath you possess, and you shall be lifted on high by wings of valor." —Imperius

PTR/Beta Invites Discussion

Some heated discussions have arisen over at the Official Forums regarding the methods PTR/Beta invites are given out through.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

If youre not a streamer providing free mass advertising and hype forget it...

Not true. It is correct that we have invited a number of streamers and fan sites into the beta, but I can assure you that the greatest number of beta invitations by far have been sent out in waves via the battle.net opt-in system.

just wondering if its totally random who gets a key,

It is random. Basically it's like this; any player who has opted in for the beta on their battle.net account page has a chance to be invited.

i seem to recall reading something about the more active players being the first in line but that may just have been wishful thinking or a dream.

That was a one time event that happened before the closed beta had begun, back when it was the Friends and Family beta. 

We typically do not invite players who've opted for beta testing into our very early Friends and Family betas(also sometimes called alphas), but we made an exception with the Reaper of Souls Friends and Family beta—In this case we chose to grant beta access to 3000 of the most active Diablo III players who've opted in for beta testing together with Blizzard employees (and the friends and family members of Blizzard employees) (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
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i doubt any one from EU will get invite..

Don't be so sure ;-)

we are forgoten here,not even a topic from blue about that ..

EU is not forgotten! This latest PTR/beta patch was kind of an "emergency patch" that had to be brought live faster than usual, and as such (mostly due to time zone differences) it was not possible to get the patch notes translated into the 6 other languages we support in Europe before it was brought live. Once the 6 translations are complete, the news of the patch will be posted in all 7 EU Diablo sites/forums as well.

Maybe this time some of us european get more invites 

Beta keys were distributed to European players during the last beta waves as well, but it is true that a lot of the people who really wanted beta access weren't among the lucky ones who did get a key.

any word to confirm that they keys have been sent out ?

I am not 100% sure, but I believe the next wave has yet to happen. I did not see an eta on this, so all I can say right now is to keep an eye on your inbox.

Playing Blizzard games for the last 9 years, not once have i or anyone on my friends list (excluding MVPs) received any beta invite to any of your games.

That does sound like a case of bad luck indeed, and you do have my sympathies, but I feel it important to say here that just because you and your friends have been unfortunate not to get a beta invitation so far, that doesn't mean that European players aren't getting invited into our beta tests. I of course don't know the exact number of friends of yours that you are referring to here, but I am fairly sure that number pales in comparison to the number of people who have opted in for the beta... chances unfortunately are that you and many other players might never be one of the lucky ones getting a beta invitation after having opted in. This goes for players in all regions just so you know.

Usually right from the point when we announce a new game or a new expansion, we get flooded with beta key requests right from the start, and when we announce the option to opt-in for beta testing, the interest grows even further and the number of opt-in numbers tend to surge even higher after that. Basically what I am trying to say is that whenever we send out beta invites across the different regions (even when we send them out in huge numbers), the number of beta opt-ins are always ever increasing and far greater than the number of beta testers we can accommodate. 

So i'll keep my doubts about how you guys send invites here in the EU, similar to how ignored the EU forums are compared to US for every game.

You are of course welcome to keep your doubts about how we distribute beta invitations, but I would like to clarify that the EU forums are far from ignored. I would like to remind you that we actually have 7 battle.net forums in 7 different languages in Europe, and each of those 7 EU forums have dedicated people reading them and gathering feedback every single day.

Vaneras, how come players with almost no time invested into the game gets a key, while those that has invested much get nothing? Is there an easy explanation to it, is the invites totally random from the opt-in db?

Yup it is pretty much random, and it therefore happens in some cases that less active people might get an invitation. Plenty of very active players are in the beta though, so it is not like only less active casual players have access.

how is this fair? And what kind of feedback do you expect from a player who barely played D3V?

How is it fair? Well that depends on how you look at it.

Diablo III (and all of our other games really) are made for a large audience of players, and not only super active and hardcore gamers. A player who have barely played the original game at all can offer truly valuable feedback on the newcomer experience and such a player can give us a great insight in how the gameplay feels like for the casual gamer. When you are intimately familiar with a game as hardcore players and developers often are, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the newcomer and casual experience, so getting feedback from less experienced players in the beta is quite valuable indeed. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Paragon Changes Calculations

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

They're buffing/nerfing based on data, and nothing else. Everybody was spec'ing into crit, so they nerfed crit.

Data plays a factor because it tends to send up flags about certain issues, but it isn't the only definitive reason we make changes. Data tends to highlight areas for us to investigate, as a notification of “hey, we should probably look at this again.” From there, we'll go over the math, theorycrafting, internal play tests, and external play tests and verify if we need to take action. In this particular case, mathematically speaking, the weight of Paragon points was a too favorable for Critical Hit Chance. It was brought down to be more in line, point for point, with the other Paragon stat choices.

Well ... the math actually works out pretty well in favor of this change.
Assume 40CHC 400CHD 30IAS 15% <elemental> damage and 50% of your total damage is <element>
5% CHC = 7.69% increased total dps
50% CHD = 7.69% increased total dps
10% IAS = 7.69% increased total dps
15% <elemental> = 6.98% increased total dps
As you can see, these stats are all relatively competitive with each other.

This was, and is, the intent for the Paragon system. We don't want there to be a mathematically clear choice in terms of points spent, and having some stats be more valuable for different builds is certainly a desirable outcome. Some stats might squeak ahead by a small margin, simply because they inherently scale differently, but we do want to try to get them as close as possible.

Paragon "attack speed" actually adds attacks per second to the base speed of the weapon, before all other attack speed bonuses are applied multiplicatively. Ala vanilla Echoing Fury. So a two-handed axe always gets exactly 10% bonus from 50 paragon points, while a dagger only gets 6.67%.

This is actually a bug. It should be fixed before the 2.0.1 patch comes to live realms.