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PTR Maintenance

For players helping Blizzard test the new Patch 2.3, the PTR servers will be under maintenance tomorrow for roughly 4 hours. Nevalistis also tweeted that no Patch is to be deployed with this maintenance, but we will keep our eyes open and let you know if we find anything new.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Hey everyone,

We are bringing the PTR realms down for a short maintenance on July 31st, which will begin at 9 AM PDT, and which is expected to last about 4 hours.

Please keep an eye on this thread for updates as they become available. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and thank you for your diligent testing! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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there is not a patch even deployed during this time; it's general maintenance (Twitter)

Wyatt Cheng on Invoker's Set

Wyatt Cheng had a very interesting discussion on a Reddit thread about the Invoker's set. It looks like its redesign will have to wait until Patch 2.4, but they are already gathering ideas and working on it. Read below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Reddit)

Why the hell does thorns even exist, its pretty much useless. So sick of getting the invoker set. Oohhhh 4000 damage look out normal act 1 thorns is gonna get ya.

There was an interview with Wyatt Cheng back in April where they discussed this at length (10 minute conversation about just the invoker set and thorns). The conclusion was that the "thorns fantasy" is not just to reflect damage, but to also be extremely tanky to the point that you are essentially unkillable while everything beats on you and kills itself.
The problem is that a player being extremely tanky while also doing good damage can lead to some issues. It is also reliant on things actually hitting you, so mob types that like to run away, who like to cast spells instead of attacking, or attack really slowly are problematic. It is fundamentally a more passive playstyle (stuff hits you, it dies), which is another thing they try to avoid.
Also if monsters are going after your teammates in group play, they aren't hitting you and you aren't doing any damage, but if you can force everything to hit you easily it makes it too easy to keep your entire group safe.
They talked about some possible solutions to several of these issues, like spell reflection, procs that deal thorns damage as an AOE or as an aura rather than requiring things to autoattack you only, etc.
Ultimately they'd like to redesign the set at some point, but it's not that easy to design, and they have lots of other things they want to do that this would compete with for development resources.

Thanks for summarizing these points!

We work on multiple patches in parallel and work is already underway to give Invoker's a redesign for patch 2.4. I would love to hear more about what players have in mind. Here is what we have so far.

(Please note - this is all VERY early in design it is all subject to change. Most people would be shocked to see how many times an idea changes during the development process.)

1. Something related to Thorns would be part of the Invoker's set for sure.
2. Thorns doesn't currently crit or benefit from crit damage, and it might be cool to keep it this way, so we are investigating other ring/amulet stats that could synergize well with thorns. Investigating whether we can make a super powerful high-grift clearing Invoker's build that favored alternate stats on jewelry.
3. It will be for Crusaders so a redesign can directly reference Crusader skills. Some less-often used Crusader skills are Smite, Justice, Blessed Shield, Fist of the Heavens, Consecration, Laws of Justice, Laws of Hope and Bombardment.
4. If this is going to be a high Grift capable then it needs an very active playstyle. What does 15 seconds of high end Invoker's game play look like?

Anyways - as mentioned above, this is all in early stages so nothing's nailed down yet - which makes it the best time to invite ideas!

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Leviathan's ideas (huge post)

Hey Leviathan thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts.

I'm hesitant to dedicate an entirely new 6-piece set for what we internally call overgeared farming". In a perfect world we want to move towards a place where every class has multiple high end options and I'd want to make sure that Invoker's is made high end viable the same way Helltooth is being targeted at high end viability in the coming 2.3 patch.

That said I think some of the ideas with respect to herding up monsters for greater benefit and having a stacking aspect to Thorns are both interesting.

I agree Crusaders could use overgeared farming options . Rather than devote an entire 6-piece set maybe we can maybe take a similar approach we've used in other cases such as a single legendary with a solid movement effect (Aether Walker) or 2-piece sets (Danetta's, upcoming re-worked Manajuma's) that enable high speed when you overgear the content.

Carnevil State Pre-Changes

Quite a few players were concerned with the Carnevil changes mentioned on yesterday's post. MeatHeadMikhail has made a video showing what the Carnevil build looks like right now, before that change goes live, and giving his thoughts on how the build will fare in Patch 2.3, synergies with Kanai's Cube and other related information. Check it out!