Goblins vs Gnomes has Released in North America!
Dec 9 Hero Rotation Update, From the Bullpen: Heroes and Villians
Hotfixes for December 8 - Class Tuning and More, Everburning Candle Hotfix, DLC #468
Update: Summary is up, with the Q&A part of it. VOD also up!
Legendary Workshop Stream
The Legendary Workshop stream will begin in about 5 minutes at the official Diablo channel on Twitch! We will be following and putting together a summary of all that is discussed.
Q&A Summary
Ring Elemental Rotation
Band of Untold Secrets Removal
- Will it rotate between elements that are available for the class that's using it
- Current unsolved problem: how long should the elemental rotation be?
- Ideally low (5-10 second range) because of the interaction between resource generators and spenders
- Elemental rotation probably fixed (not random) to allow planning
Helltooth set Fix?
- Was morphed into the item that makes Ice Armor better
- There was two ways of doing it: putting another item or replacing a bad one with one that has a cool power
Buffing weak Sets a high priority?
- Barbarian, DH and Wizard are getting new sets on Patch 2.2
- So John Yang wants to start working on Witch Doctor asap
Rarest Legendaries new Drop Ratio
- A priority for classes that don't have a viable build
- Put more work on classes that have only 1 viable build. Put more work into that Set/Build.
- Buffing weak sets not their number one priority
Plans to Bring Wrath of the Berserker? 2nd Life Passive for Barbarians?
- Rarest Legendaries are roughly 2.5x more common.
- Because new items added to the pool, chances of getting specific items decrease
Do devs look at Leaderboards?
- Try not to use the same ideas on every class (aka 2 minute cooldown skill be the main set focus)
- The Barbarian fantasy is not to use "magic" to cheat death, he's a big strong guy.
Buff Pets in Higher Greater Rifts
- Leaderboards is less a reflection of overall class happiness than most players think
- It's an accessory to analyse end-game balance, but not the primary one
Ramaladni's version for Jewelry
- They don't think the pets are in a bad place right now
- Monster damage has been reduced and some bugs were fixed
- Will be buffed as necessary
Ancient Items
- It's power creep on jewelry, so not currently
- Felt really bad not having a slot for your weapon
- Alternate way of getting a socket on a player's weapon
New Sets will be on the PTR?
- Not designed for 99% of the playerbase
- End-game luxury: giving something for streamers and hardcore players to hunt
Legendary Effect that promote rotating different Spenders? (similar to the Ring)
- They will be on a Patch 2.2 PTR in the future, not the 2.1.2 PTR
Affixes to Daggers? (since they have none)
- Will be discussed
D2's Quest to Name your Weapon
- Not necessarily; nothing has come up
- Circular problem: low damage on Daggers paired with no interesting affixes - requiring fixes on two systems
Allowing Players to target specific items?
- Worth looking at and seeing where it fits
Passive Buffs for the Wizard being worked on to be similar to DH's Companion and Monk's Mystic Ally.
- Currently not, they are happy with the amount of control Kadala gives
Balancing gems for Weapons
Stream Summary
- They could balance them to be mathematically balanced, by say buffing Diamond's on weapons by 10 times
- At the end of the day it's just "more damage", there's no gameplay in it
- They would rather design weapon specific Gems, for instance
Roadblocks to overcome when doing the Panel
- The Legendary Workshop panel at Blizzcon was the first of a kind
- Most panels at Blizzcon are these "one way" means of pushing information
- Developers wanted to bring the audience into the item development process
- The internal brainstorming sessions are fun for the devs and they wanted to open that up for the public
- When designing things, the developers don't just "vote" for a good idea, they discuss them and try to reach a consensus
Rejected ideas and why they didn't work
- done in 45 minutes
- going to be televised
- engaging for the audience
Energy Twister ideas
- Ideas that promote just big numbers - "criticals increase critical damage"
- Players are just killing things a little bit faster instead of interacting differently
- Suggestions that change a skill or mechanic intended use - Offensive Potions for instance.
- Example: chance on hit to ressurect enemies, it creates confusion since players can't tell which enemy skills are friendly and which are dangerous.
Mirror Image ideas
- Ransor's Folly mechanic - pulls enemies that are closest to the player within its area of effect
- Improved over giving it knockback when cast - pulling enemies retains that soft crowd control
Wizard Source (Legendary Workshop) suggestion
- Cast all of your skills instead of only equipped ones
- Problems: performance budget and confusion - each image is already an "independent Wizard"
- Ball Lightning build had to be fixed because it broke the game's performance
Legendary Workshop experience
- Rotates elements allowing for multiple element focus
- Could be a Ring instead, so that other classes could use it
- Would work as a balance factor as well - Rings have a lot of power
- Only coming after Patch 2.1.2
- They are pretty much done with Patch 2.1.2 (John Yang)
- It worked well, but there's room for improvement
- They would like to try it in other types of events, where people can see the whole process
It's a little long, but I tried writing down everything they said, not knowing if any of it would be useful, and by the time I was done it was this big. Actually two times bigger than this. But I tried keeping only the essentials.
I'm 100% open for feedback though. Lemme know what you think could be kept out of the summary so that I can improve in future streams.
Still has LoH bug and it still sux.
Loving the new changes and all, but it just feels like they forgot about that.
Words fail me.