Blizzcon In-Game Goodies, Kadala's Tweaks, Other Blue Posts, Titan Cancelled, Greater Rift 43 Cold DH

Hearthstone's BlizzCon Goody: Exclusive Card Back, TeSPA Card Back Earning Details
Heroes of the Storm's BlizzCon Goody: Exclusive Mount & Portrait
Blizzard Cancels Titan Project

Blizzcon In-Game Goodies

The 2014 Blizzcon exclusive in-game rewards have been revealed, and Reaper of Souls got a nice set of Weapon transmog skins - which attendants and virtual ticket buyers will get later this year. Check a small snippet below (with only the Diablo part of it), or the full blog post here.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Source)

BlizzCon loot explosion! It’s time to take a sneak peek at this year’s BlizzCon in-game goodies for World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III*, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and the upcoming Heroes of the Storm**—they’re yours whether you’re attending the show in person or watching from home with the Virtual Ticket.
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Diablo III – Warlords of Draenor Weapon Transmogrifications
Outfit your heroes with six weapon transmogrification appearances inspired by World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor—one for each of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls’ classes.

blizzcon2014-virtual-ticket-goody-05-d3-v02_Amaral.jpg

Kadala's Tweaks

The gambling merchant Kadala was changed in today's patch and her prices got raised significantly, but so did the chance of Legendaries. A blue post came up to clarify that the chance of getting a Legendary from her now is roughly 10% - a 33% increase from her previous drop chances. Read below!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)

I'm ok with Blood Shard prices going up with increased chance of legendary going up to compensate.
Fewer trips back and forth between Blacksmith and Kadala.

However, the cost of rare crafting materials required to reroll / craft items should also be lowered to compensate, otherwise this is going to be a net nerf to our ability to reroll and craft items.
Hey there I see a lot of threads popping up on this topic so I wanted to stop in for a visit and explain the changes. The Kadala change is primarily meant to be a quality of life change for players. Having to fill up your inventory and run back and forth to the blacksmith could be a mildly cumbersome experience and we wanted to improve that. All items on Kadala had their cost increased, when this was done the chance for her to give you items was also increased but by more than the cost justified. For the same number of shards as before players will now walk away with 1/3 more legendary items. 

Since we wanted this change to be purely better for players and we know that many people get their crafting materials from Kadala we also decided to add a lot of extra crafting reagent drops to Greater and normal Rift Guardians. The overall impact should be that you are getting roughly the same amount of crafting materials, except instead of getting primarily yellow mats like Kadala gives you, the mats on the Guardians could be white, blue, or yellow. This should help even out the quantities of assorted material types instead of flooding players with just one type like Kadala was inclined to do.

We will continue keeping on eye on all the effects of the changes. If we find that these changes had any meaningful negative impact on the ability for players to generate crafting materials we will make further tuning adjustments to the amount of material dropped by Rift Guardians. 

TLDR - You get more items than you used to! (Official Forums)
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For clarity since my phrasing is losing people. Blood shard costs are 5x higher, to keep the same reward per shard I raised drop rates by 5x as well. Then after that I further raised the legendary chance by another 33%. The chance to get a legendary from Kadala is now 10%. Since the system is random players will inevitably go on streaks but over the course of time all players move towards the average and that average is now 33% more items than before. 

On the crafting mat side, the material drops are random so its possible for players to find white, blue, or yellow mats in varying quantities. If you see 1 Veiled Crystal on a kill that doesn't mean every kill drops 1. (Official Forums)

Other Blue Posts

There were a few other blue posts, mostly clarifying other changes brought by today's patches. The first is about how the Keys used to craft an Infernal Machine are now group drops, and what that means; and the second is about the Crusader's Shield Bash, which had some interesting quality of life changes.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Key Group Drops
Would someone please explain to me what this means from the patch notes? 

-Key of Bones, Key of Gluttony, and Key of War are now group drops
It means that if a key drops while in a group, then the key drops for everyone in the group. The intent is that it will now be much easier for everyone to be on the same page when farming Infernal Machines. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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The Key of Evil is apparently already a group drop to begin with, so it's not included amongst the other three described in the patch notes.
This is correct (and thanks to Jaetch for jumping in to answer). 

The Key of Evil was already a group drop, and this change just brings the other key drops in line with that one. I understand the confusion, though, as it's been a while since the change to Key of Evil, and most people will have forgotten about it at this point. 
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Shield Bash Changes
But there's a fundamental flaw. You can't hold down the button and activate other skills.
Today's patch addressed this specific issue with Shield Bash, and you should now be able to activate other skills during the animation. Thanks for all of the reports on this, everyone! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Second, this change to shield bash is a very minor and quality of life good thing actually. It makes it so you can use your abilities now while in the middle of holding down shield bash, whereas before you couldn't. That means you can pop your defensive cooldown, or shield glare, or bowmen and it will actually go off now when you need it to instead of ending up dead because you were pushing it but unable to have it take effect. Mostly noticeable the higher you go in GRifts.

The wording on the change makes it sound like a bad thing, or a nerf, but in play it really isn't. I have already noticed the change and it is a good thing overall.
Dead on assessment. I understand how the wording in the patch note could be misinterpreted. The intent of this change is to allow the Shield Bash animation to be ended early by the player in order to allow for more fluid play. All attacks in the game currently work this way, and Shield Bash was an outlier, so we've fixed that.

We've had a lot of feedback on Shield Bash "feeling clunky" and this was an issue we identified to smooth it out. Give it a try and let us know how it feels. We're eager to know! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Titan Cancelled

Some of you might remember Blizzard restarting their other MMO, codename Titan, last year. Mike Morhaime told Polygon today that project has been cancelled, and that the company will be focusing on other projects. Check the summary below!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Original Source)

  • Blizzard realized with Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm that not all of their games have to be huge ones.
  • Titan's team thought they could make another amazing MMO, but it just ended up not being fun or passionate enough.
  • Cancelling Titan was an excruciating decision for Metzen, but he knows kind of decision usually leads to higher quality work.
  • There are no plans currently to work on another MMO.

Greater Rift 43 Cold DH

Natalya85 uploaded another high level solo rift clear - this time a GR level 43, with the usual Cold DH build. He talks about some Gem choices for this particular run, since he's using Zei's Stone of Vengeance instead of Bane of the Powerful, and how some graphic choices might help avoid certain affixes. Some informative insights - check it out!

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