Hellfire Ring Proc Damage Nerfed, State of Monks, New Customer Support Phone Hours, Blue Posts

Update: Lylirra posted a clarification about the Hellfire Ring Proc Nerf. See blue post below.

Hellfire Ring Proc Damage Nerfed
Reports are in that the damage of the Hellfire Ring's proc has been reduced from crits of 700k to around that of 25k. summy01 was able to get a picture of the lower proc damage.


Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

It was actually a bug fix. The ring's proc damage was incorrectly scaling with a player's primary stats and weapon damage, which it was never designed to do. While we agree it was pretty sweet to see your characters do millions of damage in a single hit, no other Legendary procs scale this way -- and that's intended.

The Hellfire Ring will still be valuable, though. It may not be as valuable to players who have reached Paragon 100 now that it doesn't deal buttloads of damage when it procs, but it will still be competitive. Given the nature of how the ring is crafted, it has the opportunity to roll with some pretty incredible stats, so one of the rings you create may be BiS for you. Then again, it may not, but that's a good reason to keep farming (if that's your thing).

As for players who are leveling Paragon, we're okay with Hellfire being BiS. Yes, it will help you level up faster, but even if you stack it with Leoric's Signet and a ruby gem in your helm, reaching 100 will still take a very long time. And, as you've illustrated, the ring probably won't be a "must-have" forever, at least not for everyone depending on the stats you roll.

I.E. what this guy said:

The Hellfire Ring can still be BiS, now you just need to rolls to do so. You already have High main stat....you just need the 4 randoms to roll trifecta. It will now take a LOT of farming to get BIS hellfire ring.



State of Monks
Monks have been getting some questions answered lately, which began from the post about the state of the class we linked to you two days ago. These are all of the new discussions on the subject.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

While there are currently solid build options for monks both in 1.0.4 and 1.0.5, and while top-tiered monks using very specific builds can achieve respectable damage, the class isn’t yet where we want it to be. We’re definitely aware of your concerns, and we agree that additional improvements should be made, especially with regards to play style options, build diversity, and the performance and budget of monk resources. We feel that the monk has the most potential for improvement, and we have plans to make more changes to the monk after 1.0.5. The sort of changes we’d like to make are not simple number tweaks, though.

Ultimately, we want to make monks more engaging to play and really immerse players in what it would feel like to be a fast-punching martial arts master. We have a number of ideas on how to accomplish that for the future, and we want to provide improved passives, particularly passives that can be used for a more offensively-minded monk. I also mentioned two other possible changes we’re considering in my previous post, but those certainly aren’t the only changes we’re looking into. They address another area we feel could use improvement, and that’s giving players some additional, more active play style options.

We have more improvements planned and they’re still only in the discussion phase, so we’re not really in a place right now to talk about them in much detail, but we’re actively working towards solutions to address many key concerns.

Your first post saying monks are SOLID CLASS in terms of power....
Correct, but that's only one variable when it comes to class balance. In terms of power, we feel that monks are doing pretty well. But in terms of build and play style diversity, resource management and budgeting, and offensive passives, we feel that there's still room for improvement. There's a lot that works for monks right now, but there are definitely areas that could be better.

Oh, and what is with this "we can't just tweek numbers to ballance the class" do you read your own patch notes? what was the last game mechanic change you made that did not involve either "doubling it" or cutting it in half? WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN THERE? of course you can tweek numbers to buff weak skills. ugh all you ever do with your patches is change a variable in a formula and now all of a sudden you can't? who actually believes this load?
I think you may have misunderstood. The kinds of changes we're currently considering for monks (the changes we feel would best benefit the class) go beyond simply upping one number or lowering another. The examples Vaeflare provided for Dashing Strike and Lashing Tail Kick fall into this category. Adjusting numbers is fairly easy to do, but redesigning how a skill or skill rune works is much more complex. While we still may tweak some skill values in the future, right now we're looking at changes that require a little more development time.

As for "what was the last mechanic change you made that did not involve either 'doubling it' or cutting it in half"? From 1.0.5, the changes to Companion and Sentry are great examples, and we're redesigning some runes this patch too. From 1.0.4, witch doctor pet improvements were pretty notable. We also changed the format for how damage over time is dealt for a number of skills, as well.

Ohh I get it, you mean nerfing OWE, right?
What Wyatt said previously still holds true:
In terms of passives, it's pretty clear at this point that One With Everything is considered a mandatory passive for all monks. While "mandatory" passives aren't great, making any major change would do more harm than good, particularly when a) incoming damage is so high and B) monks need the extra durability in order to survive. Additionally, as a result of this passive, monks are more heavily tied to their current gear, so making changes to One With Everything would have very noticeable negative repercussions to the gear monks have invested in.

While we'd prefer that there wasn't an "absolutely mandatory" passive, we're going to let this one ride for now. If we do try to make changes we'll ideally do it in a way that doesn't invalidate the passive, doesn't hurt monk survivability, and doesn't undermine the gear people are currently wearing.


We don't have any changes planned for OWE right now. That may change, but if it does, we'd still want our approach to be as outlined above.

When you guys look into build diversity, it'd be nice if you took some of these proposed changes to our combination strikes into consideration: http://us.battle.net...07333164?page=1
I'll take a look. :)

(And, no, this doesn't mean I haven't seen all the other threads players have posted. This forum has kept me very busy with all the feedback you've provided. Keep it up!)

I have been under the impression that while there is no specific change planned for OWE, there is a plan that OWE will eventually be changed somehow to make it a less mandatory passive.
You're correct, that's still the plan. I'm just saying we don't have any specific changes for OWE at the moment.

Tell us kindly the good reason in nerfing the defense passives when 90% of monk's passives
Just so that I know that we're on the same page, have you had the opportunity to read this developer journal, yet? http://us.battle.net...n/blog/7155884/ (It was written a few weeks ago, so it may have been missed.)

It goes pretty in depth into why we're making changes to defensive skills, and breaks down each change class-by-class.



New Customer Support Phone Hours
For those of you that find yourselves calling the Blizzard Customer Support phones often here are their new hours.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beginning Friday, October 5, our Customer Service department will be answering your phone calls on a new daily schedule. Here are the specifics:

In North America, our Customer Service phone hours are now:

10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Pacific Time for English support
10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Pacific Time for Spanish support
6:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Pacific Time for Portuguese support

In Europe, our Customer Service phone hours are now:

10:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m. British Time for all languages
12:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m. Central European Time for all languages

In Australia and New Zealand our Customer Service phone hours are now:

8:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. local time
5:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m. local time

For more ways to contact Blizzard Customer Service, self-help options, and a complete list of our support phone numbers for every region, visit our Support Contact Information page.



Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hellfire Rings can be salvaged
Hellfire Rings can be indeed be salvaged. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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