UPDATE (04/11/2011): The official patch notes have been updated; see below. Thanks to PaNtsONhEaD from our IRC (#diablofans on freenode) for the update!
Official Blizzard Quote:
General
- The Cauldron of Jordan is no longer available in beta content. It will be rewarded to players at a higher level in the game.
Official Blizzard Quote:
General
- All characters have been wiped. As part of this process, artisans, gold, and items (including those placed on the auction house or in a shared stash) have also been reset.
- Switching out class skills will now require the use of a new feature known as the Nephalem Altar. Nephalem Altars are currently located in New Tristram, as well as in key locations throughout Act I. Clicking on an altar will open up the skill UI, allowing both active and passive skills to be selected or exchanged.
- Quests
- Gold rewarded from quests has been significantly reduced
- Experience rewarded from quests after level 4 is now based on the number of mobs you’d have to kill to earn the same amount of experience, rather than being a strict percentage of a level
- Skills
- New passive skills have been added for all classes. See individual class notes below for more information.
- AoE (Area of Effect) skills for all classes have had their damage reduced
- Single-target skills for all classes have had their damage increased
- All skills are now based off weapon damage
- User Interface
- The in-game UI has been updated with general art and usability improvements
Classes
- Barbarian
- Active Skills
- The Barbarian's Fury Generators have received a tuning pass. Bash, Cleave, and Frenzy now generate more Fury whereas the other Fury Generators now generate less.
- Additional changes include:
- Battle Rage
- Damage bonus reduced from 30% to 20%
- Revenge
- The chance for this ability to activate has been increased from 10% to 15%
- Weapon Throw
- Fury cost reduced from 20 to 10
- Damage decreased from 210% to 180%
- Passive Skills
- New passive skills have been added:
- Nerves of Steel
- Unlocked at level 12
- Your defense is increased by 25% of your Vitality
- Demon Hunter
- General
- Maximum Hatred reduced from 150 to 125
- Active Skills
- The order in which skills are awarded has been adjusted for levels 1 to 13.
- Resource management for the Demon Hunter has been reworked significantly. Skills for the class now fall into the three categories: Hatred Generators, Hatred Spenders, and Discipline Spenders
- Hatred Generators
- Bola Shot: Generates 2 Hatred
- Entangling Shot: Generates 4 Hatred
- Evasive Fire: Generates 4 Hatred*
- Grenades: Generates 2 Hatred
- Impale: Generates 6 Hatred
- Hatred Spenders
- Chakram: Costs 10 Hatred
- Elemental Arrow: Costs 5 Hatred
- Hungering Arrow: Costs 10 Hatred
- Rapid Fire: Costs 30 Hatred (initially) and 1.5 Hatred per second for each additional shot
- Discipline Spenders
- Caltrops: Costs 8 Discipline
- Shadow Power: Costs 20 Discipline
- Vault: Costs 10 Discipline
- Evasive Fire: Costs 4 Discipline to Backflip
- Additional changes include:
- Bola Shot
- On-hit damage increased from 100% to 105%
- Chakram
- Damage reduced from 150% to 135%
- Grenades
- Damage increased from 75% to 80%
- Hungering Arrow
- Damage increased from 115% to 145%
- Pierce chance is once again a fixed 35% rather than scaling with level
- Impale
- Impale has been given a new spell effect. It is now a thrown dagger instead of a bow shot.
- Rapid Fire
- Damage increased from 35% weapon damage per shot to 38% weapon damage per shot
- Shadow Power
- Attack speed bonus reduced from 50% to 30%
- Passive Skills
- New passive skills have been added:
- Tactical Advantage
- Unlocked at level 10
- Whenever you use Vault, Smokescreen, or backflip with Evasive Fire you gain 60% movement speed for 2 seconds
- Monk
- Active Skills
- Mantras
- All Mantras now have a 15 second cooldown and grant a bonus effect for the first 3 seconds after activation
- Additional changes include:
- Blinding Flash
- Spirit cost reduced from 50 to 30
- Duration reduced from 5 second to 3 seconds
- Breath of Heaven
- Spirit cost reduced from 75 to 25
- Healing amount reduced
- Crippling Wave
- Damage increased from 120% to 135%
- Deadly Reach
- Damage increased from 110% to 120%
- Fists of Thunder
- Damage increased from 100% to 120%
- Lashing Tail Kick
- Spirit cost increased from 25 to 30
- Damage increased from 130% to 180%
- Passive Skills
- Transcendence
- Healing per Spirit reduced
- Witch Doctor
- Active Skills
- All Witch Doctor skills now do damage based on your weapon damage and cast at a speed based on your weapon attack speed.
- Passive skills
- New passive skills have been added:
- Circle of Life
- Unlocked at level 12
- Whenever an enemy dies within 12 yards there is a 5% chance that a Zombie dog will automatically emerge
- Jungle Fortitude
- Unlocked at level 10
- Reduces all damage taken by you and your pets by 20%
- Wizard
- Active Skills
- The order in which skills are awarded from levels 6 to 13 has been adjusted. Players will now unlock offensive and defensive spells in an alternating order.
- All Wizard skills now do damage based on your weapon damage and cast at a speed based on your weapon attack speed.
- Passive Skills
- New passive skills have been added:
- Critical Mass
- Unlocked at level 12
- Your critical hits reduce the cooldown of your spells by 1 second
Followers
- Templar
- Skills
- Guardian
- Ability now unlocks at level 20, instead of level 5
- Heal
- Healing provided by this ability will now scale properly
- When activated, ability will heal you for ¼ of your total health every 15 seconds
- Will only heal when player is below 50% health, down from 67%
- Intimidate
- Slow amount reduced from 80% to 50%
- Intervene
- Intervene is the new name for Taunt, and now unlocks at level 5
- Radius of monsters to be taunted reduced from 30 to 10 yards
- Duration reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds
- Will now only cast when player is below 50%
- Cooldown increased from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
- Loyalty
- Life regenerated by this ability will now scale properly
Items
- General
- Players now start with 5 health potions
- Health globes now heal you over 1.5 seconds rather than over 5 seconds
- The number of chests, shrines, and other interactable items (e.g. bookcases and loose stones) has been greatly reduced across the entire game
- Items sold from vendors will now be at least one item level lower than those that are currently available to a player via drops from monsters
- The level of an item is now much more likely to match or be close to the level of the monster from which it dropped, and the affixes that appear are much more likely to be from the upper range
- Weapons
- Several significant changes have been made to weapons and weapon damage affixes:
- The damage bonus granted to two-handed weapons over one-handed weapons has been reduced from 15%-38% from level 1-60 to 13%-32%
- Wands attack speed has been increased from 1.2 to 1.4
- Quivers, Orbs, and Mojos will now always come with +Min/Max damage
- Ceremonial Daggers will now frequently come with +Mana Regen
- Wands will now frequently come with the +Max Arcane Power
- The amount of inherent slow granted by cold weapons has been reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second
- One-handed crossbows and daggers now pull from a separate pool of affixes for + damage
- The damage variance between weapons of the same type has been reduced.
- Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that was causing two-handed Monk combat staves to not receive the proper damage bonus
Monsters
- General
- A new Mortar affix has been added to the game. Mortar monsters will lob grenades at enemies outside melee range.
- Lightning bolt damage from Electrified-enchanted monsters has been reduced by 40%
- Monsters that are enchanted to an element (Molten, Electrified, etc.) now correctly have 50% resistance to their chosen element
- Ex: Molten monsters will have 50% damage resistance to Fire at equal level
- Wretched Mothers in Act I can now only summon one zombie at a time
- Treasure Goblins are now immune to fear
- Bosses
- Skeleton King
- Whirlwind damage increased from 100% to 300%
- Cleave damage increased from 80% to 100%
Crafting
- Artisans
- Blacksmith
- Blacksmiths now start with a Fist weapon and a Dagger weapon option to craft
- Blacksmith leveling and crafting recipes have received a tuning pass
- Items
- Pages of Training will now drop starting at level 6, down from level 8
- The chance for Magic and Rare items to salvage into higher quality crafting material has been increased from 1% to 5%
- Salvaging blue items now has a 1% chance to salvage into Legendary crafting material
Thanks! Didn't even think of that. Was too busy looking for a button.
That's exactly how I feel about it! I loved the ability before, now it just seems awkward. Pew pew pew with the bow, then chuck a knife! Wait, what?
Gonna stream some beta 5 for a while. Starting with Demon Hunter.
Instead of Hydra's they now toss an Orb at a random location which then spins around randomly with a long arcane line damaging you if you get hit, was pretty brutal - wish i captured a screenshot when I could.
I actually like the change, but I've just run into them on a ranged class and it was easy enough to avoid them this time (not sure if being melee would make a difference?). The way they were before I'd always nearly die and had to run around and LoS the stuff until the hydras despawned. Plus the glowy orb with lazers looks cool.
Oh, and has anyone else ran into Mortar enchanted mobs yet? I came across one and the graphic for the spell is so messed up and awesome. Bright pink squares ftw!
Also found the mortar mobs, GIANT blobs of pink squares popping out!
I think they thought there wasn't enough pink in the beta. I found pink pants.
I think the passives are just new for the lower levels. They switched around what passives you get at lower levels for the Demon Hunter as well.
Fan of Knives is more of a melee ability, and I try to stay out of melee as much as I can (it's range is 10 yards), but to me it makes sense as a melee ability. Impale is just weird to me because you're shooting, than suddenly you stop and chuck a knife. I would compare it more to grenades, which originally I didn't care for, but after playing around with them a bit I loved using them (especially to blow up barrels >.>). Impale has grown on me, the ability itself and how it looks is pretty badass, but it seems like it would fit in more if it were a shot.
On a side note, Elemental Arrow is awesome!
Had a nice pink chest plate on my wizard before this patch!
I'm playing the monk myself, but some small things I've noticed is that some of the skills you get at different levels than before for the first several levels.
Also Fists of Thunder has a new animation for all 3 of it's levels, it's not quite as bright or out there and actually looks like lightning is coming from the fists, not just a giant orb in front of your hero. Dashing Strike also looks cleaner and leaves float around after you dash, almost as if your speed is knocking debris into the air, looks nice.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Resource management for the Demon Hunter has been reworked significantly. Skills for the class now fall into the three categories: Hatred Generators, Hatred Spenders, and Discipline Spenders.
Far as I know, that's the big change. Hatred regenerates a bit slower now on it's own, but many of your skills generate hatred, so you switch between using your big spenders and generators now.
Or just spam Elemental arrow.
Each time you level up and get a new skill, you have to go back to town or find an altar to select the new skill.
The previous system was perfect, entertaining and fast paced, like the rest of the game is.
Thank you very much, whiners!
I don't have much of a problem with it, it's a bit annoying at the start of the game. The worst part of it by far is that when you unlock a new skill you can't even view what it does (or view any of the skills you aren't currently using) until you find an altar.
It actually reminds me of being in WoW and having to visit a trainer to train new abilities. *cough*
I like it, though it could use some tweaks like the ones that Jael mentioned. Whats the purpose of having a build (Or even a 6 active skill limit for that matter) when you can just leave your skill window open and change everything on the fly whenever you want anyways.
It's not that bad, only slightly annoying in the beginning of the game - but once you get Stone of Recall, it doesn't really matter anymore.
I didn't get it either and I've been clearing every single nook and cranny of all the maps.