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Greater Rift Reward Restructure

It appears that the rewards for doing Greater Rifts will receive some tweaks in a future PTR build. Some of the details were shared earlier on the official forums.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

There has been a ton of great feedback coming our way about Greater Rifts and your experiences with them. So let me take a moment to just say thank you! It's been super helpful to us and confirmed a lot of suspicions our development team has had regarding their current reward structure. Plenty of changes are coming in the next PTR patch that reflect these concerns.

• Urshi will no longer only spawn when a Greater Rift is failed; instead, she will spawn at the end of every Greater Rift level. You'll be able to choose whether you wish to upgrade your gem or, assuming that you completed that Rift within the time limit, move on to the next level.

• The Rift Guardian will spawn at the 15 minute mark regardless of whether your bar has reached full progress. This should eliminate "the slog" at higher Greater Rifts where you fail, but have the rest of the level to go before you get your rewards.

• The pacing for upgrading your Legendary Gems is being significantly revised.
  • Legendary gem upgrades are now more likely to receive multiple ranks per upgrade attempt at higher Greater Rift tiers, to a maximum of 4 ranks at a time.
  • This is in addition to the higher chance to upgrade gained at each additional Greater Rift tier.
  • To compensate for this change, individual ranks are less powerful. The rate of power accrual will roughly be the same, you'll just experience it more frequently!

These are some pretty significant changes to the Greater Rift reward scheme and they should vastly improve your experience when completing and conquering higher Greater Rift tiers. Be sure to let us know what you think once these changes are on our PTR!

*Edited for clarity*

Monks' Planned Changes

Some of the changes planned for Monks in a future PTR build have been revealed. And they are quite interesting! Read below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

This next PTR patch is going to have a BUNCH of Monk changes headed your way. There's a lot to talk about here, so bear with me. This is gonna be a long one.

While we touched on Spirit Regeneration a little bit in the last patch, that was the tip of the iceberg. We're going over all the Monk Spirit Generators and making some significant changes. 

Monks are quick strikers, and we wanted to increase the Spirit generation and damage of each Primary skill without just upping the numbers. We're addressing this by increasing the Attack Speed scalar of most Monk generators. This means that each will operate more quickly and scale better with Attack Speed. This is a change you won't see reflected in the tooltip or PTR data mining, but should experience in practice, especially if you already have a substantial amount of Attack Speed. This change addresses both concerns while further embracing that Monk fantasy of being fast and nimble.

We're also addressing some of the remaining Dodge mechanics that Monks have left in their kit. We're leaving a few options for players who really want to embrace the Dodge mechanic and focus on it, but others we're retooling to provide more consistent and reliable benefits. Mantra of Evasion is being replaced with Mantra of Salvation, and the base skill will now provide you and your allies within 60 yards a 20% bonus to All Resistance. We've moved the Dodge bonus to a new rune, Agility, and you'll find some other useful utility among the other new runes. 

There are plenty of other changes coming as well, but I don't want to get too patch-notey here. Expect some quality of life and DPS boosts to spenders like Lashing Tail Kick and Wave of Light to make them more competitive and offer you additional options. The new Alabaster Gloves have been removed and replaced with a new Monk Seasonal Legendary Fist Weapon that increases the maximum stack count of Sweeping Winds by 5-7. Overall, there will be new toys to play with, and we're looking forward to seeing your feedback on these changes as we move into our next PTR patch.

Blue Posts Roundup

Other less juicy blue posts also appeared today, mentioning some bug fixes, how some Conquests (from Seasons) are not working on the PTR and how they plan to extend the 2-hander buff to item levels 10 to 70. Check them out below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Two Handed Weapons Buff
We're planning on expanding the level range for the retroactive damage buff to 2-handed weapons, so that it will include item levels 10-70 in patch 2.1. One of the benefits of this change is that it should help lower level Crusaders feel like Heavenly Strength is still a good choice. The percent of increased damage will still be based on the weapon speed, and not based on item level. So, lower level items will receive the same base percent damage increase as their higher level counterparts. Additionally, we're adjusting the amount of increased damage from 23-26% to 26-30%.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Sprinter and Speed Racer Conquests

Maybe it's currently not working/implemented? I find it strange that the leaderboards for this category are completely empty.

Strange indeed! After doing a little digging on this, unfortunately it appears this particular Conquest is currently broken. This should be resolved in the next PTR, though I don't have an ETA on when that will be at this time.

If we get to tyrael in 59 minutes, will it trigger on the current patch? Or is it 100% not working right now? would hate to spend anymore time on it.

The achievement is granted, but the Leaderboard won't register the score. So if you're looking for the Leaderboard credit, it would be best to wait until the next PTR patch. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Wizard Hydra Bug

1- Hydras are proccing the electrified effect on Elites, and im not sure if theyre supposed to, but still the proc are out of control, it covers the entire ground making almost impossible in higher Great Rift levels to get near the mobs. Right now its completely unsafe to run Hydras in parties, you ll just end up killing everyone.

2- Hydras are still consuming Arcane Dynamo stacks, but not gaining any benefict from it, which i dont know if theyre supposed to, but in case of not, it shouldnt consume the stack.

Just wanted to pop in here and let you know that we have a potential fix in place internally for for both of these issues, and that these fixes should make it into our next PTR patch. I obviously can't make any promises as to when that will be, but we are working to get that out as soon as possible!

Thanks for the reports! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Speed Racer Timer Proc

When does the speedracer timer end? at the credits? does the timer include load screen time? Any blue that can help out here?

Currently it ends when interacting with Tyrael. We'll be changing this to occur on Malthael's death in the next PTR patch.  
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Legendary Gem Guide

KageKaze has uploaded to youtube a comprehensive guide to the Legendary Gems which will be implemented in Patch 2.1 as a reward from Greater Rifts. Some things are bound to change, like how the gem's bonuses scale, specially since all information is based on the current PTR build. But it is nonetheless an amazing compendium of all the information so far, with lots of in-game footage to back it up. A must watch!