Diablo III Discussion

101gamzer

Ambassador of Buzz
Blizzard Lifts Restrictions On New Diablo III Players

Blizzard recently announced that it would restrict new, digital buyers of Diablo III to Act I for upto 72-hours until their credit card were verified. That is no longer the case. Players can now progress beyond Act I but will be restricted from participating in the real-money (or gold) auction house, joining public games, or chatting in any public or game channels. Below is the full list of restrictions straight from the devs:

Players who download the game will only have the following temporary restrictions:
  • No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
  • No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
  • Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
  • Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
  • Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
  • Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers


The restrictions will lift once the credit card is verified, which according to Blizzard could take just a few hours or 72-hours. Just hold in there!
 
My Current Status (Act I Hell)

Wizard (Female/Softcore): Level 50
Barbarian (Male/Softcore): Level 24
Demon Hunter (Female/Softcore): Level 14


Brother's Current Status (Act I Hell)

Monk (Male/Softcore): Level 51
Barbarian (Male/Softcore): Level 23
Witch Doctor (Male/Hardcore): Level 8
 

a_k_s_h_a_y

Dreaming
sold 2 items.. 10 million and 13 million.. all this gold is absolutely useless. no decent upgrades.. need to stack at least 100 mil gold to get farming level gear..
 

007

Killing Machine
Diablo III + The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion/Bioshock Double Pack available for 3999 at nextworld.in
 
[BNet] Character Profiles Are Live

It looks like character profiles are now live! In order to view them, you must login and then click "view profile" found at the top right. Make sure you are going to the correct battle.net page to view your profiles.

Blizzard said:
Yup, they’re ready.

All you need to do is log in with your Battle.net account (look for the login box in the upper-right hand corner of your screen) to access character profiles from any page on the Diablo III community site. Profiles give you the power to:

* View your heroes’ gear, stats, and skills. How high have you raised your characters’ attributes? What are they wielding in each slot? What are their most prominent gear bonuses? What skills comprise their current build? Nuance awaits you in the Heroes tab.
* Track your game progress. How many acts have you cleared? What bosses have you shredded in each difficulty? How far have you leveled up your hardcore and normal artisans? Find out in the Career tab. You can also check your play time (by class) throughout your entire Diablo III career, and learn how many monsters and elites you’ve slain.
* Share with your friends. The Friends tab lets you check out your BattleTag friends’ characters, so that you can quickly compare notes on gear, skill & rune choices, and everything in between. You can also click on a BattleTag in the Diablo III forums to go directly to that player’s profile.

*media.diablofans.com/images/news/2012/august/a1.jpg

*media.diablofans.com/images/news/2012/august/a2.jpg

We like that profiles provide for easy sharing, comparing, and refining of your heroes as you pursue monster-slaying mastery. In fact, we like profiles so much that we plan to add even more functionality to them as Diablo III evolves, including detailed statisticsand tabs for achievements and artisans.

If there’s something else you’d like to see appear in a character profile, please make sure to let us know in the comments below or on our website forums.

Happy Clicking!

-Blizzard Web Team

Source
 

007

Killing Machine
All - Please check this out and make sure your accounts are safe!

Important Security Update - Blizzard Entertainment
 
Developer Blog - 1.0.4 Systems Preview

The first of many developer blogs has just been posted! Check below for a quick bullet point recap. However I strongly suggest checking over the full post! Patch 1.0.4 is currently targeted for the fourth week in August.

  • Magic find and gold find will no longer be averaged in multiplayer games.
  • Monster health will now be a flat increase of 75% health (per player), regardless of the difficulty in multiplayer.
  • No more enrage timers on elites.
  • Elites will no longer heal to full health.
  • They are increasing the health of normal monsters (but increasing the drop of magic or rare items by a factor of four), and lowering the health of champions and rares to shrink the gap between them.
  • They are adjusting fire chains and shielding, and REMOVING Invulnerable Minions.
  • They want to make all items that drop be good, however this is not something they can fully do in 1.0.4. However weapons of ilvl 61 and 62 can now roll damage that extends all the way to top ilvl 63 weapons.
  • To help with the dual-wielding and two-handers, they will be adding a new set of stronger affixes.
  • Reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.
  • Legendary changes will have its own blog post.
  • Many more blogs to come covering the buffing of unused skills, and big improvements to WD pets.

Blizzard said:
Well, we're getting closer to 1.0.4, and while it's still a few weeks away we're going to start hitting you fast and furious with blogs aimed at explaining the upcoming changes. To kick things off, I wanted to provide an overview of some of the larger systems changes and game improvements.

Let's get started!

So Happy Together
While many people are playing co-op, it’s still a minority of games. Ideally we would like players who want to play solo to be able to solo, and players who want to play co-op to play co-op. At the moment though playing solo is the clear choice, even for those who would prefer co-op with some of their friends.

The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage per additional player was a great start, but we can clearly go a bit further. The first change we’re making in 1.0.4 for co-op is to remove averaging in multiplayer games of Magic Find and Gold Find. You’ll benefit from your full Magic Find stat, independent of other players in the game. We originally added Magic Find averaging so optimal play did not involve people stacking what we call “adventure stats” to the detriment of their party. While this may re-emerge as a problem, we think the current solution feels like too much of a penalty, and is doing more harm than good.

Along the same lines as the change in 1.0.3, we’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now. This makes enemies far more manageable in co-op games, and rewards a co-ordinated group with a higher farming efficiency than playing alone.

Shrinking the Gap
"In 1.0.4 we're going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs."
We know there are a lot of you out there that are really frustrated by the difficulty of some of the champion and rare packs, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs (Champions and Rares). The design intent of Champion and Rare packs is to provide a spike of challenge, but in general we feel like the gap is too big. Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall. In general we’re looking to bring normal enemies up a smidge, and Champions and Rares down.

So, in 1.0.4 we’re increasing the health of normal monsters by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno, but also increasing the likelihood they drop magic or rare items by a factor of four. We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.

To further reduce the gap between normal and Elite monsters, we’re adjusting some of the more frustrating monster affixes, such as Fire Chains and Shielding.* Of course there are some normal monsters that are massive spikes in difficulty too, and we’ll be making polish adjustments to a few of those as well, like reducing the damage of two-handed skeletons like Skull Cleavers.

Weapons Master
One of the general improvements we’d like to make to our item game addresses the difference between an item having a chance of being good vs. knowing the item isn’t going to be good before you even identify it. In other words, there’s a world of difference between an item having no chance of being good, and some chance of being good. It’s not something we’re going to be able to fully address in 1.0.4, but giving every dropped item a chance to be good is a long-term goal. One area we felt we could make immediate improvements for 1.0.4 was with weapons.

Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63.

We also want to close the gap between dual-wielding and two-handers, and so we’re improving two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes to compensate for the loss of stats that can come from your offhand.

On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills. Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways. It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns. We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”. Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear. As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed. So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher. A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds. The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.

Efficiency vs. Challenge
"We're removing Enrage timers and the "heal back to full" behavior from champion and Rare monster packs."
Rather than focus on whether or not you can beat an enemy, many players would rather figure out how fast they can beat them. We’re removing Enrage Timers and the “heal back to full” behavior from Champion and Rare monster packs. We don’t think they fit well into the general philosophy of the game, which is more about trying to farm as efficiently as possible. You’re already incentivized to kill things quickly, if a pack happens to take you a long time it can just feel unfair to have the pack enrage, kill you, and then heal back to full. The original intent behind Enrage Timers was to have a few encounters that served as a “DPS check” that also add tension and excitement. Due to the randomness of Champion and Rare monsters, combined with a general philosophy of efficient farming, this was simply the wrong approach for us to take. The Enrage Timers feel more appropriate on bosses, where the setup, predictability and mechanics of the fight add the required context for the time limit.

We can’t get away from the Efficiency vs Challenge discussion without talking about death penalties. When we increased repair costs in 1.0.3 it was to make death meaningful. Efficiency is not only about how fast you kill things, but what efforts you’re putting into doing so. Dying should cut into efficiency, and that creates a meaningful challenge to stay alive in not only how you play, but the importance of how you’re designing your character. That said, we think repair costs are just a bit too high, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to be reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.

Legendarier
We have improvements coming to Legendary items, and it seems like an important enough subject to give them their own blog. Stay tuned as Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers gives the rundown in the next week or two. As a general reminder though, existing items are not changing. The Legendary improvements are going to be for Legendaries dropped or crafted after the 1.0.4 patch goes live.

Stay Classy
"We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we're going to have a separate blog posts for each."
We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each. But in general we’re looking at unpopular skills and asking ourselves a few questions:

  • Does the skill have any control or readability issues that would make the skill less satisfying to use? If so – polish the skill more. A good example here is the Barbarian Rend ability – many people don’t use it because you can’t always tell which enemies are affected by the bleed and which aren’t.
  • Does the skill fill a similar role as an extremely popular skill? If so, buff the skill to be competitive with the popular skill. For example, Bola Shot could be a solid skill, but simply doesn’t have the raw damage when compared to Hungering Arrow, so we’re buffing Bola Shot to be competitive.
  • Does a skill have a dominant rune? If so, can we buff the underused runes to be more competitive? A good example here is the Wizard Hydra skill. The Venom Hydra is by far the most popular rune, and for good reason, so we are buffing the other runes to make them more competitive with Venom Hydra.
  • Is the skill a resource spender? In general we have found that many resource spenders just don’t do enough for their resource cost. Here I would use the example of Wave of Light, which is a fairly significant expenditure of Spirit that doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Many damage-oriented resource spenders are receiving buffs in 1.0.4.
  • Would buffing the skill increase or decrease build diversity? Some skills when buffed cause other skills to become obsolete, so there’s a net decrease in build diversity - we’re more careful with those. Other skills, when buffed, add to the total pool of appealing skills, which increases build diversity. The most obvious example here is the Witch Doctor Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan, which are both receiving significant improvements in 1.0.4.

We hope you have fun, and stay tuned for each of the specific class articles in the next couple weeks.

The Outro
These are really just a few of the topline systems changes we’ll be making in 1.0.4, and we hope you’re looking forward to them as much as we are. We’ll of course have a lot more info coming at you in the weeks ahead on Legendary items, classes and more, as well as some interviews we’ll be holding shortly before the patch goes live – which, by the way, is currently targeted for the fourth week of August.

See you in-game!

"P.S. We’re getting rid of the Invulnerable Minions monster affix."

Source
 
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Patch 1.0.4 Legendary Item Improvements

Blizzard said:
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Soon after we released Diablo III, many of you commented on Legendary items. Most of those comments were fairly harsh, but they were also dead-on accurate. In many ways the Legendary items that we released with the game were just Rares with flavor text. You called us on it, and we’ve listened. Since then I've been working hard with the team to give Legendary items some of the flavor and feeling that they deserve. With patch 1.0.4 just around the corner, and the new Legendary items coming in that patch, I wanted to share some of the changes with you here today. Let's talk about the biggest complaints we heard from you all, along with some we had from our team, and look at what we've managed to do to address them.

They Should Feel Unique

Many of you commented, rightly, that the Legendary items in the game didn’t feel unique enough. Something that Diablo II did really well was to create some very memorable items, and they were called “Uniques.” While we call them Legendaries now, the word “unique” was something we tried to keep in mind when making these changes. The rarity of Legendary items combined with their color means that when they drop you should feel like you’re getting something special, something that isn’t just another sword. A truly legendary item should have history behind it, something that you can imagine a powerful wizard imbuing with special magics from within the depths of his musty library.

Part of that feeling comes when you equip the item, and you see that it has special, custom artwork that sets it apart from every other item in the game. The artists already nailed this part of it, but with 1.0.4 they’ve gone the extra mile to ensure these items show off, visually, how truly epic they are. But we’ll cover that in a bit.

On my end, the design end, to get the uniqueness into Legendary items, we've added custom effects to over 50 of them. Here are just a few.

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/689SXRKW9YTA1344454806088.jpg
We're letting players exact some revenge on rare and Champion and Rare packs by giving players monster affixes through Legendary items. This is just one example.

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/ACO2DKG1DN9O1344454806444.jpg
Reminiscent of the Enchantress ability, this lets you turn enemies against each other.

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/X7N790XPE86A1344454805641.jpg
Aside from looking really cool as it leaves a trail of fire behind you, this lets you create some interesting traps.

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/740ZCC78PQAF1344454806276.jpg
There's some just-for-fun stuff too. Everyone wants to be just like Ghom! These pants make you “stinky”, complete with debuff and gas cloud effect -- you can even spread this effect to friendly players.

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/02YO1Y9BNY4Q1338413380483.png

Old vs New
*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/NL2FONUU3Q3W1344454806392.jpg *us.media4.battle.net/cms/gallery/OMII3SOI1ZS31344454806344.jpg
A giant column of light shoots down, summoning an Angel to fight by your side. 'Nuff said.

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/HMQ0147RM5NN1338413380471.png

Old vs New
*us.media2.battle.net/cms/gallery/BJ9991IRR64J1344454806265.jpg *us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/0IZH56HIX1FL1344454806133.jpg
This sword has a chance to summon a demon to fight with you -- with a twist. This demon has the Fire Chains affix, and the other end is attached to your character. Mwahaha!

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/02YO1Y9BNY4Q1338413380483.png​

Promote Build Diversity

Because Legendary items are unique, we can do some fun stuff with them that we can't really do with other types of items. One of the main goals of Diablo III and the skill/rune system is providing a huge amount of character customization. With Legendary items we can help support those goals. In 1.0.4 we've added a number of items that really fit into a niche skill kit. This can help people to branch out into less common builds by seeing this item and thinking, heck, why not give it a try? They may not have the highest DPS stats in the game, but they can help you play your class in new and interesting ways.

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/0D903FQKQLGE1344454806086.jpg
Some people want to try out a ranged barb. We think that's awesome. Here you go.

*us.media4.battle.net/cms/gallery/O6KIW0EASTPD1344454805947.jpg
The melee wizard concept is pretty popular, and we think this wand will be too.

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/47IG9GUYV1BD1344454806017.jpg
Certainly not an uncommon build, but this is a great item for any pet-focused witch doctors, and with the pet buffs also coming in 1.0.4 we think it’s going to be very desirable.

Provide Interesting Choices

With great power comes great responsibility. Some affixes in the game seem like they'd be too unbalanced if we let them stack too high. So how do we make sure we can go higher?

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/ULCOPQ7NKSVQ1344454805978.jpg​

Goldskin is a good example. 100% gold find on it, plus monsters have a chance to drop gold when you hit them. Not too bad, right? But the tradeoff is it can’t roll core stats. We instead follow the flavor of the item, and being a skin of gold (!), provide you with some additional resistances and mitigation. It’s going to create some interesting choices on how you can make this item work for you. You have to find other ways to get the stats that you really need if you really want all that sweet, sweet gold. Balancing your items out like this can provide some fun and interesting challenges.

Honoring Our Ancestors

We brought a lot of items back from the Diablo franchise for Diablo III, but in many cases all we really did was bring back their name. I don't think we did a great job initially of bringing back the way that they helped you play the game. We've done a pass on all the "ancestor" Legendaries to make sure they remain as true to their name as we could make them, and in some cases we've made them even better

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/28O9D1Z5ZHR41344454805974.jpg
New Frosties feel a lot more like old Frosties, with big bonuses to Cold Damage and Cold skills.

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/M8OU2X1R91JY1344454805642.jpg
Honoring the original by giving all projectile attacks a chance to pierce through the target's defenses.

They Feel Powerful

We used to reduce the value of certain affixes on Legendary items because we were concerned that having fixed affixes would make them unbalanced. What it actually did was make those items kind of crappy. For example, if the item's level (ilvl) was 50, the first affix would always roll at 50, then the next would roll at 47, and the next would roll at 43. This was done to offset the power of fixed affixes in a random world, but we've learned it's not necessary, and Legendary items being powerful is OK. So lesson learned, we no longer reduce the value of any of the fixed affixes on Legendary items. For example, if an ilvl 50 Legendary item had Strength as one of its fixed affixes, previously it may have rolled a range that you would have seen on a level 45 item, making it seem really underpowered, but now it will always roll within the range of a level 50 affix. In addition, Legendary items used to cap out at ilvl 62, making it near impossible to find a weapon that had strong DPS. No more. We’ve promoted a LOT of the new Legendaries so that they will roll at ilvl 63, giving them access to the highest possible affix rolls that are in the game. We're also working on some changes for 1.0.4 to make two-handers better in general, and this will affect two-handed Legendary items as well. Here’s a good example of all-of-the-above.

Old vs New
*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/028PXA5HH5571344454806333.jpg *us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/A4NW0787UKL11344454806331.jpg​

Everything Else

That probably about covers it for the major points we're hitting with Legendary items in 1.0.4, but there's a few extra details on how they’re going to work once the patch hits we want to make sure everyone is prepared for.

  • Going Forward - As a reminder, these changes will only affect Legendary items that drop after the release of patch 1.0.4. This includes items that haven’t been identified yet (as items are rolled when they drop). With the extensive changes being made we can’t exactly translate old Legendary items to new. What might have been a decent item could become worse if we re-roll it, and vice-versa.
  • Not Everything is Changing! - Sometimes a Legendary just being really powerful is enough, and some Legendary items are already really good. Helm of Command, for example, won’t be changing in 1.0.4.
  • What About Sets? - It’s worth clarifying that green Set items are Legendary items (just with a set bonus) and so the above philosophy applies to them as well. Some set bonuses are changing, they’re becoming more powerful, and a lot of them are having their base ilvl increased to 63.
  • New Set Names - As set bonuses won’t interact between pre-1.0.4 and post-1.0.4 sets, the new Sets will have new names, as well as new individual pieces, to prevent confusion.
  • Crafted Legendaries - If you currently have a crafting plan for a Legendary item, and if we change the item that you’re able to craft in any way, you will NOT have to get a new crafting plan for that item. If you craft something right after 1.0.4 comes out you’ll get the new item.

We thank you for your continued feedback, and look forward to seeing how the new Legendaries treat you in 1.0.4 and beyond. Look out for additional 1.0.4 info blogs as we near the patch release.

One More Thing…

I’m really proud of how the entire team came together to make these changes -- and it truly was a team-wide effort. When we were first discussing buffing Legendaries and making them cooler, a bunch of the artists got really excited and went out of their way to make them a whole lot sexier. Here's a sneak peek at just a few of the changes they're making to the items, as well as some of their proc powers.

Please enjoy!

[YOUTUBE]3SquWnPo9GI[/YOUTUBE]​

Source
 
Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Barbarian

Blizzard said:
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One of our primary goals with class changes in patch 1.0.4 is to help improve build diversity. Of course, this has been a goal for the Diablo III development team since launch, but our approach this patch has been a little different. For 1.0.4, we're taking a good look at some of the most unpopular skills for each class, figuring out why they aren't being used in your builds, and then seeing how we can make them better -- either by redesigning how they work or just buffing the hell out of them. For barbarians, we focused on improving the following areas:
  • Bash and Cleave are not very attractive compared to Frenzy.
  • Many of the damage-oriented Fury Spenders don't do enough damage to justify the spot on your bar.

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/HMQ0147RM5NN1338413380471.png

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_frenzy.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_bash.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_cleave.png​

Fury Generators
  • Frenzy: It’s easy to see why Frenzy is the most popular Fury Generator right now. It generates a solid amount of Fury, it has the highest single-target damage of any Fury generator, and it has the highest single-target healing using Life on Hit. The bonus attack speed also provides good combat mobility as well as the option to focus all your damage on a single target or distribute it between multiple targets as needed. We're going to buff Bash and Cleave to be viable alternatives to Frenzy for people who would like to try a different play style.
  • Bash: From a design perspective, Bash should be the definitive choice when it comes to maximizing your Fury generation. That’s not currently the case, and given the current state of the game, this means attacking the problem from two sides. First, we need to make Fury a more attractive resource to build up (which also means making Fury Spenders more attractive, which I talk about below). Second, we’re going to increase the amount of Fury generated by Bash from 6 to 8, as well as the amount of weapon damage done by Bash from 150% to 165%. The goal is to make Bash not only a very compelling option if you decide you want to focus on Fury generation, but also an appealing single-target alternative to Frenzy if you don’t enjoy its mechanics (like having to manage Frenzy stacks). Currently, Frenzy surpasses Bash in single-target damage as soon as you have your third stack of Frenzy, and it feels like the breakpoint should be around the fourth stack instead. These changes should help better balance the appeal of the two skills.
  • Cleave: Looking at the three basic Fury Generators (Frenzy, Bash and Cleave), the role of Cleave is fairly straight-forward: it should be the clear winner when there is more than one target to hit. In a single-target situation, however, Cleave will always perform worse than Bash and Frenzy. While this is intended to a degree, the amount of single-target damage you currently have to give up feels too great to make the trade-off worthwhile. At an extreme, if Cleave did almost exactly the same damage as Bash or Frenzy, but had the ability to hit a second target when one was around, Cleave would definitely become that “clear winner.” So, to make it more appealing to some players, our goal is then to find that sweet spot between where Cleave is now and doing the same single-target as Frenzy and Bash. We’re going to increase both the damage and proc coefficient on Cleave to close the gap when fighting a single target.

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/HMQ0147RM5NN1338413380471.png

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_hammeroftheancients.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_seismicslam.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/barbarian_rend.png​

Fury Spenders

For many players, using Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam, or Rend just doesn’t seem worth it. To make these skills more attractive, we're going to straight up buff their damage across the board. How much? Well, we noticed that more players use Battle Rage than any of these other Fury Spenders, but Battle Rage is less exciting to use and doesn’t quite evoke the same visceral joy. So, we used Battle Rage and Frenzy as our starting point. We basically asked ourselves the question "How much damage would Hammer of the Ancients have to do in order to make Frenzy + Hammer [of the Ancients] as appealing as Frenzy + Battle Rage?" Players who really want to go the extra mile for the most damage could go so far as to combine all three skills together, so we kept that in mind as well.
Hammer of the Ancients vs. Battle Rage was a simple starting point, but we used similar approaches with Seismic Slam, and Rend. The basic idea was: Fury generation isn’t attractive to players because Fury spending isn’t attractive to players, so what do the numbers need to be to fix that? To continue using Hammer of the Ancients as an example:
  • We're increasing its base damage from 200% to 325%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Rolling Thunder from 155% to 275%.
  • We’re increasing the damage for Smash from 270% to 406%.

And to provide another example, here’s what we’re doing with Rend:
  • Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds.
  • Lacerate weapon damage increased from 271% over 3 seconds to 903% over 5 seconds.
  • Bloodbath weapon damage increased from 60% over 3 seconds to 100% over 5 seconds.

With these improvements (Whirlwind and Seismic Slam will be receiving similar tweaks to improve their viability), we hope to see Fury Spenders become more appealing for all levels of play.

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But What About…
I'll close by adding that there are no changes planned for either Sprint or Battle Rage, so all you crazy double tornado barbarians will still be able to log in after 1.0.4 goes live and continue with your current build. Or, you can try out some of the new toys we’re adding. Either way, we hope you have fun and are looking forward to 1.0.4!

Source

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Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Wizard

Blizzard said:
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Like the other classes, the wizard is also seeing a lot of tuning improvements to help promote build diversity. Rather than focus on those minor adjustments, though (which you'll be able to learn more about in the 1.0.4 patch notes), I’m going focus the majority of this preview on Hydra. Here are the major points I'll cover:
  • Skill design philosophy for Diablo as a whole.
  • What makes Venom Hydra as strong as it is.
  • Why, rather than nerfing Venom Hydra, we're simply going to buff all the other Hydra variants.

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Nature of the Beast

From a development standpoint, we love Hydra and put a lot of effort into its design. In fact, Hydra took many times more development time to create than an average skill. There are more art variants, more spell effects, and more lines of code associated with Hydra than almost any other wizard skill in the game (except potentially Archon). We did this because Hydra is an iconic skill in the wizard’s arsenal and we wanted it to stand out. When you’re in a multiplayer game and you see that Hydra spawn, it’s instantly recognizable. And for those who are familiar with the class, you can also immediately tell which rune variant a wizard is running with.

Our goal for Hydra is to not just have each rune variant be visually distinct, but also for it to be better at something than the others. Specifically:

  • Arcane Hydra: Best at AoE.
  • Lightning Hydra: Good against targets that move a lot.
  • Venom Hydra: Good against targets that stand still.
  • Frost Hydra: Good for snaring.
  • Mammoth Hydra: Best in hallways.

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New Tristram, We Have a Problem

Despite these goals, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Venom Hydra is simply the best Hydra to use, regardless of the situation. This is mostly to do with its very high damage output. Although (technically) against fast-moving targets the Lightning Hydra does slightly more damage, Venom Hydra does three times more damage if you get the target to stand still, and that difference is simply too big to pass up.

The other rune variants have similar issues. The range on the Frost Hydra is too short to be useful. The DPS loss Arcane Hydra takes for being good at AoE makes it too weak versus single targets (especially when you consider that most of the hard fights are against high health Elites). The niche for Mammoth Hydra is very narrow and, if you can get a target to stand still, Venom Hydra does more damage in hallways than Mammoth Hydra anyways.

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Five Heads Are Better Than One

To address these issues, we’ve decided to boost the damage of Lightning, Frost, Arcane, and Mammoth Hydra. Venom Hydra will remain the best against stationary targets, but if the targets are moving in any way, Lightning should be a clear winner. The range of Frost Hydra has been more than doubled as well, which should allow it to fill the intended role of snaring. Arcane Hydra will do less damage than Venom Hydra versus a single target, but rather than doing approximately 60% less damage, choosing it should only cause about a 15-20% DPS hit against single targets — and you should be much better against groups. Mammoth Hydra will be getting a modest bump, but ultimately “good in hallways” just doesn’t seem like a very good specialty. We’re going to keep an eye on this one for now, but down the road we’d like to find something much cooler for the Mammoth Hydra — like giving it the ability to move around the battlefield without needing to be recast (just as an example).

Here are some raw numbers:
  • Arcane Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 28% to 60% per Arcane Orb.
  • Lightning Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 34% to 64%.
  • Frost Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 31% to 36%.
  • Mammoth Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 22% to 67%.

Frost Hydra's cone width has also been changed from 15 yards with a 60 degree spread to 35 yards with a 30 degree spread.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_electrocute.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_icearmor.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_energyarmor.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_stormarmor.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_spectralblade.png​

Skill Diversity

One concern is how this change will affect skill diversity. If our goal is to promote a large variety of builds, why are we taking one of the most powerful wizard runes and then bumping all of the variants to match it rather than simply nerfing Venom Hydra?

From our point of view, it's okay for Venom Hydra to be extremely powerful. One of the trickiest things throughout our design process has been creating lots of appealing skills. You only have six skill slots, so the more appealing skills we can make, the more significant your choice becomes of which skills earn a spot on your bar. If a Signature skill is on the strong side, it starts to trump the other Signature skills. If a Signature skill is way too strong then it starts to trump your Arcane Power spenders as well. This hurts build diversity. Similar situations exist for Arcane Power spenders, many defensive skills, and the trio of Armor skills (Ice Armor, Storm Armor, and Energy Armor).

However, in the case of Hydra, the risk of trumping other skills is much lower. It’s totally okay for Hydra to be one of the most used skills because there’s still a lot of flexibility beyond making it your only source of DPS. If you can spare the skill slot, you’ll almost certainly want to combine it with a Signature skill to cast while the Hydra is out. If you can spare two skill slots, you can do even more damage by adding a secondary Arcane Power spender.

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Trigger-Happy

While patch 1.0.4 has very few nerfs, one of them does affect the wizard. Rather than waiting for players to discover this change in the patch notes or while playing, I wanted to call it out here because it affects a build that I find to be quite cool and enjoy a lot.

Energy Twister is having its proc coefficient reduced from 0.25 to 0.125. For players who may not know what proc coefficients are: they affect how effectively a skill triggers procs (or effects that have a small chance to activate). Many skills (like Magic Missile) have a proc coefficient of 1. Skills that hit multiple targets or pulse multiple times have lower proc coefficients.

In the case of Energy Twister, specifically Wicked Wind, the 0.25 proc coefficient causes the skill to generate more procs in a given time period than any other skill. Currently, this is used in combination with Critical Mass to lower the cooldown on skills like Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. By reducing the proc coefficient from 0.25 to 0.125, the build still works and remains fairly strong, but it won’t be quite as good as it is now. (For those with extremely high Crit rates, you may not even notice much difference, but I wanted to call it out anyway.)

Originally, we weren’t going to make this change, but 1.0.4 also brings with it a number of new Legendary items, and many of them have phenomenal new proc effects. If we left high proc coefficients as they were, then a handful of skills with higher coefficients would become the de facto choice to use with these sexy new items. We were faced with a choice: we could either reduce the proc coefficient, or we could make it so these skills could not trigger the procs on Legendary items at all. We opted for the former because it seemed like getting a Legendary with a proc effect but never seeing it trigger would be very disappointing. Regardless, having well-balanced proc coefficients on all skills is not only better for Legendaries, but also for the long-term of the game.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_magicmissile.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_meteor.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_shockpulse.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_teleport.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/wizard_arcanetorrent.png​

Buffs, Buffs, and More Buffs

The reduced proc coefficient is just a drop in the bucket, and overall wizards are seeing their fair share of buffing.

In addition to the Hydra buffs, we're also increasing the damage of some lesser used Signature skill runes. A few skills are very popular right now such as Seeker (Magic Missile) and Piercing Orb (Shock Pulse), so we’ll be buffing the other runes to match. We'll be revisiting all of the other Signature skill runes with much the same philosophy as Hydra.

Meteor and Arcane Torrent are both going to get buffs, as well, since neither of those feel strong enough to justify the Arcane Power expenditure.

Meteor:
  • Base damage increased from 200% + 60% over 3 seconds to 260% + 60% over 3 seconds.
  • Molten Impact damage increased from 260% +78% over 3 seconds to 390% + 90% over 3 seconds.
  • Meteor Shower damage increased from 80% to 104% for each smaller Meteor.
  • Comet damage (of initial hit) increased from 240% to 312%.

Arcane Torrent:
  • Arcane Power cost reduced from 20 to 16.
  • Base damage increased from 175% to 210%.
  • Arcane Mines damage increased from 150% to 180%.
  • Cascade damage increased from 175% to 210%.
  • Death Blossom projectiles are now less random.

Meteor requires the player to correctly predict enemy movement in order to deal maximum damage, and Arcane Torrent requires you to stand still for extended periods of time to do damage. Since a player is putting in some extra effort to use these skills, some extra damage seems justified.

Source
 
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Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Monk

Blizzard said:
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The most important changes for the monk in 1.0.4 are aimed at improving damage-focused Spirit Spenders. We're happy with where Spirit Generators are right now, but unfortunately once you have Spirit, there aren’t very many appealing ways to use it. In many cases, the most effective use of Spirit has been to recast a Mantra repeatedly for the three-second bonus. While this is certainly one possibility, it doesn't seem as exciting as using one of the more offensively-focused Spirit Spenders (or at least having that option available).

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Spirit Spenders

Exploding Palm: From a strict usability standpoint, we think the visuals for Exploding Palm can be a little difficult to interpret. It's hard to tell who's affected by the Bleed and who's being damaged by the resulting explosion. Our Visual Effects team has made some improvements in 1.0.4 which will make it easier for players to tell who's bleeding and who's getting damaged.

From a mechanics standpoint, the three-second Bleed can make the explosion hard to pull off, and the damage just doesn't seem enough to be worth the Spirit cost. To help with both of these issues, we’re increasing the duration of the Bleed to nine seconds as well as its damage per second, which should make it more likely that monsters you’ve touched with Exploding Palm will go boom when they die.

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Current: 220% weapon damage over 3 seconds
1.0.4: 745% weapon damage over 9 seconds

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(Don't worry, Impending Doom is also having its duration increased to 15 seconds.)

Seven-Sided Strike: The original intent for Seven-Sided Strike was for it to be a solid damage dealer that you could use for a quick burst. Where Serenity granted you an amazing period of invulnerability, and your other combat skills could put out some damage, Seven-Sided Strike would ideally exist somewhere in the middle by offering some invulnerability and some damage. Unfortunately, the way it currently plays out, Seven-Sided Strike feels more like a bad version of Serenity, and the damage just doesn’t seem worth it. To address this, we’ll be doing a straight damage increase to Seven-Sided Strike to make it an attractive option for those who are looking for a skill that really packs a punch.

The damage buff to Seven Sided Strike is significant. And although players rarely complain when a skill gets buffed, it does leave one wondering why a lower damage existed in the first place.

The answer is: our initial design was flawed in several ways. To get the skill where it needed to be, we identified three distinct problems that were plaguing not only Seven-Sided Strike, but other class skills as well, and each problem merited a damage increase.
  • First, we're upping the damage of many skills with longer cooldowns in 1.0.4. Across all classes, if I can only hit a button once every so often, it needs to dole out some significant damage to justify the spot on my bar. While some skills, like Archon and Wrath of the Berserker, are significant enough to make the cut, there are a lot of skills that need DPS improvements to make their cooldowns worthwhile. Indeed, many monks use Seven-Sided Strike for the brief invulnerability, not the damage.
  • Second, we're also upping the damage on skills that spend Spirit. As mentioned in the introduction, Spirit Spenders are getting buffed because the Spirit cost needs to be weighed against the benefit of using that Spirit on something else -- such as refreshing your Mantra.
  • Third, we're taking a hard look at distinctive, class-defining skills that create better tension on your skill bar. We'd like to promote skills that help to fulfill the fantasy of a class; skills that make you feel happy that you chose the class you did. Since the fantasy of a monk involves being fast, agile, and hard to hit, Seven-Sided Strike seemed like a natural candidate.

We looked at making these improvements across all skills and all classes, and Seven-Sided Strike benefitted all three times. As a result, the 1.0.4 version of the skill is incredibly potent (we'll save the details for the patch notes).

Wave of Light: Wave of Light is the kind of skill that just needs to do way more damage. It has a big Spirit cost, but it doesn’t seem to pay off based on the amount of Spirit invested into it. In general, we’d like Lashing Tail Kick to be a skill that’s good against a small number of targets and feels relatively "spammable," and for Wave of Light to be a skill that’s more of an investment -- something that you don’t use as frequently, but pays out with bigger damage numbers when you actually do hit the button.

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Current: 215% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE
1.0.4: 390% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE

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This is just for the base skill. Wall of Light, Explosive Light, and Pillar of the Ancients damage has also been buffed up by a fair amount.

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Passives

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.

Last but not least, we added the ability for monks to wield two-handed weapons in 1.0.3, along with supporting animations. This has allowed some monks who enjoy two-handers to play this way, but it's not always effective. In the Systems Preview, we mentioned that two-handed melee weapons are getting a buff, and that will help. As additional support, the Spirit generation bonus granted by The Guardian's Path is going to be increased from 25% to 35%.

Source

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Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Demon Hunter

Blizzard said:
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Hungering Arrow is currently the best-performing Hatred Generator for demon hunters. With its high theoretical damage output, strong Hatred generation, and straightforward mechanics, it's an easy go-to skill to have on your bar.

As with other classes, when there's a single skill (or set of skills) that is much stronger or more worthwhile to use, it curbs potential build diversity. To help open up some other options, we're taking a look at Hatred Generators and Spenders, as well as some of the demon hunter's more iconic abilities like Rain of Vengeance and Sentry, and will be upping the damage on all of them.

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Hatred Generators

Four skills are intended to compete with Hungering Arrow as a Hatred Generator: Entangling Shot, Bola Shot, Evasive Fire, and Grenades. While each of these skills offer some unique utility options (Entangling Shot slows enemies, Bola Shot has an AoE component, Evasive Fire provides an escape route, and Grenades can bounce off walls), their damage just isn’t competitive enough when compared to the theoretical damage of Hungering Arrow and its rune variants.

In the case of Grenades, the skill has some minor mechanical and control issues that keep its unique ability to bounce off walls from really shining through. It can be difficult to get the grenade projectiles to where you want them, and using the skill doesn’t always feel very smooth. We explored some alternate targeting methods over the course of 1.0.4's development cycle to help improve this, but we weren't happy with anything we came up with. Most often, we found that by introducing targeting that allowed Grenades to bounce off a wall in a satisfying way, it would often make it so you couldn’t hit a monster you directly clicked on. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a great solution yet, so the Grenades skill isn't going to get as much love this patch. However, we do want to revisit the skill in the future.

As for the other three Hatred Generators, rather than nerfing Hungering Arrow to be less powerful, we’re instead bringing up the damage values for all three skills to make them more attractive. To use Bola Shot as an example:
  • Damage to the primary target is being increased from 130% to 160%.
  • Damage for Thunder Ball and Acid Strike is also being increased from 130% to 160%.
  • Damage for Imminent Doom to the primary target is being increased from 182% to 216%.

With these changes, Hungering Arrow will still do more theoretical damage against a single target, but Bola Shot damage will become a viable DPS alternative and it will also do AoE damage. Entangling Shot and Evasive Fire are receiving boosts to their damage as well, so they should be much more compelling choices when it comes to Hatred generation. Much like Bola Shot, they won't compete directly with Hungering Arrow in terms of raw theoretical damage to a single target, but the DPS loss won’t be as great in order to gain the utility they offer.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_chakram.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_elementalarrow.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_clusterarrow.png​

Hatred Spenders

Our general philosophy for resource-spending skills (and this applies across all classes) is if you take the time to spend your resource, we want you to feel like you got a good return for it. Elemental Arrow is currently the most popular Hatred Spender in the demon hunter's arsenal and a good example for what works — given how quickly you can fire off each arrow, you can deal a lot of damage to nearby enemies. Unfortunately, many of the other Hatred Spenders fail to meet this benchmark in terms of DPS output, so we're buffing them up to match. To give you an idea of what kind of increases you’ll see in 1.0.4, let's use Chakram and Cluster Arrow as examples.

Chakram:
  • We're increasing its damage from 150% to 170%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Twin Chakrams from 100% to 114%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Serpentine from 203% to 230%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Razor Disk from 165% to 187%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Boomerang from 188% to 230%.
  • We're increasing the damage for Shuriken Cloud from 30% to 34%.

Cluster Arrow:
  • We're increasing the initial bomb damage from 200% to 225%.
  • We're increasing damage for Maelstrom from 145% to 165%.
  • We're increasing damage for Loaded for Bear from 290% to 304%.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_rainofvengeance.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_sentry.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/demonhunter_rainofvengeance.png​

Iconic Abilities

Just like Hydra for the wizard, Rain of Vengeance is intended to be a trademark spell for the demon hunter. We want it to be one of those buttons on your bar that you look forward to pushing — not only because it's visually very fitting for the class, but also because it packs one hell of a punch.

While the skill is where it needs to be visually, mechanically it lacks the "oomph" that most iconic class abilities possess. Its damage is just far too low to compete with other skills available.

To bring Rain of Vengeance up to the level it needs to be, we made some pretty notable changes. Not only did we buff the damage, but Rain of Vengeance is one of the skills being converted to a strict X% weapon damage over Y seconds format, as alluded to in the Systems Preview. As a result, the new base skill is quite potent:

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/MO010OF9ESV11334191716770.png

Current: 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds
1.0.4: 715% weapon damage over 5 seconds

*us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/KKZW0YDVPDT91334191716743.png​

(Anathema now also uses the "X% weapon damage over Y seconds format." Meanwhile, Dark Cloud, Beastly Bombs, Stampede, and Flying Strike are receiving straight boosts to their damage. )

Sentry is also a very distinctive spell that doesn't get used very often. It's interesting mechanically, and it has some nice potential for team play, so we'd like to make it more attractive. The solution was pretty simple for this one: we took its damage, and then we doubled it.

Source

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Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Witch Doctor

Blizzard said:
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Out of the five Diablo III classes, witch doctors are receiving the most attention in patch 1.0.4. The goal for this patch, like for many of the other classes, was simple: identify the unpopular or hard-to-use skills, figure out what’s not working, and then make them better. In some cases, skills only needed slight tuning -- a little more damage here, or some increased durations there. In other cases, more significant changes were required. For the purpose of this preview, we'll focus on the bigger changes, which can be broken down into the following categories:
  • Pet survivability
  • Vision Quest design flaws
  • Splinters and Zombie Bears are way more appealing than most other skills

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_summonzombiedog.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_passive_junglefortitude.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_gargantuan.png*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_passive_zombiehandler.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_sacrifice.png​

Pets

One of the core play styles for the witch doctor (and indeed the reason many people chose to play a witch doctor to begin with) is to have pets. Unfortunately, while witch doctor pets do pretty well in Normal difficulty, their survivability has been virtually non-existent in Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. From our perspective, this isn't acceptable, so we're making some significant buffs to pets in 1.0.4. The goal of these buffs is to make pets not only more viable in those later difficulties, but also more enjoyable for players who prefer to base their builds around them.

From a design perspective, we want your pets to be durable enough so they can tank for you, but we don't want them to just be automatically immortal. The cooldown on summoning pets is there for a reason. Speaking more specifically, we'd like for there to be times when your pets have died, your cooldowns haven't refreshed yet, and you have that period of increased tension as you wait for the situation to stabilize again. On the other hand, we'd also like for there to be noticeable improvements for players who put thought and effort into their skill and gear selections to make their pets as strong as possible.

Trial and Error: One of the first things we tried internally was to have Zombie Dogs scale their Life directly with their owner's Life (Zombie Dogs already inherit Armor and Resistance from their owner). This had mixed results. For example, if the player stacked a large amount of Life, Armor, and Resist, it was possible to have Zombie Dogs tank most of Act I and parts of Act 2 in Inferno. As much as it made sense to have Zombie Dogs scale directly with your gear, it actually inhibited a completely different playstyle: players who wanted their witch doctor to be more of a glass cannon, but still have their Zombie Dogs able to tank. And with that we went back to the drawing board.

The next time around we gave the Zombie Dogs a base amount of Life, and in addition to this base value, they would also receive 35% of their owner's Life. So, you had a Zombie Dog that could scale with your gear, but if you were built as a glass cannon you’d still have that base amount of Life to fall back on. To help with general survivability, we also gave Zombie Dogs some innate passive Life regeneration. This test was much more successful. The Zombie Dogs could survive through most parts of Act I and Act II of Inferno just fine and died only occasionally to really difficult encounters. In Act III and Act IV, however, they could take maybe one or two hits, but the outcome was always the same: dead Zombie dogs. We tried increasing the bonus to 100% of their owner's Life -- and even to 150% at one point, just to see what would happen -- but it was to no avail. The incoming damage just scaled up too high in those later Acts.

So, we made some more adjustments to their scaling, we gave them more passive regeneration, and we made pets resistant to even more AoE effects (such as Plagued, Frozen, and Mortar). The result was positive, but not perfect: Zombie Dogs could now tough out Acts I and II of Inferno, but they were still melting in Acts III and IV.

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The Final Product: Our final iteration was to give Zombie Dogs their own version of the wizard skill Force Armor, which limits the amount of damage a wizard can take in a single hit up to 35% of their maximum Life. Much like the rationale for reducing damage for AoE effects, pets take more damage from melee than players. Pets also don't back off when they’re low, make use of doorways, or avoid big attacks.

When translating "Force Armor" over to Zombie Dogs, we wanted to make sure they could still scale with the player's Life, Armor, and Resistances. So, rather than a flat 35%, the damage cap per hit is based on inherited Armor and Resistance values, and rather than scaling with the total Life, the mitigation amount is calculated on the base health of the Zombie Dogs, allowing additional Life to actually scale exceptionally well.

This might be a bit confusing, so let's set up an example using a level 60 witch doctor. Let’s say this witch doctor has 32,000 Life, 45% mitigation from Armor, and 30% mitigation from Resistances. (For clarity, this means that 55% of incoming damage gets past the player’s Armor, and 70% of the incoming damage gets past Resistances.)
  • The base Life of a level 60 Zombie Dog is 10,000 Life.
  • With scaling, each Zombie Dog will have 21,200 Life. (10,000 [base] + 32,000 * 35% [scaling])
  • The maximum damage the Zombie Dog can take in a single hit will be 3850 Life. (10,000 [base] * 55% [damage not mitigated by armor] * 70% [damage not mitigated by Resistances])
  • Ignoring passive Life regeneration, this means each Zombie Dog will always be able to take at least 5.5 hits. (21,200 [Life] / 3850 [damage])

Once you factor in some passive Life regeneration and healing from health globes, Zombie Dogs can do reasonably well in Inferno. Players who decide to go with a glass cannon build while using Zombie Dogs will have pets that can tank for short periods of time. Meanwhile, players who build with some survivability and choose pet-oriented passives like Fierce Loyalty, Zombie Handler, and Jungle Fortitude will find their pets to be extremely durable and very capable of handling all Acts of Inferno.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_hex.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_massconfusion.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_passive_visionquest.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_soulharvest.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_bigbadvoodoo.png​

Vision Quest

As it stands now, without Vision Quest, many builds feel like you never have quite enough Mana.
Don't get me wrong: feeling like you always want more Mana can be a good thing, otherwise the resource system isn’t really doing its job. Even so, there are two major issues with Vision Quest that we want to address. The first is that it can feel very "feast or famine" when you're using it; sometimes you have near limitless Mana and at other times you're starved for resources. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it forces you to keep four skills on cooldown in order to be useful. This can be frustrating for a witch doctor who wants to use a cooldown skill strategically, but ends up casting the spell early for the Mana regeneration benefits.

Let’s use Big Bad Voodoo as an example. Big Bad Voodoo might be ready to go, but you need it on cooldown for Vision Quest to stay active. So, you cast the skill with only a handful of enemies on the screen. Then, no more than 20 seconds later, you come across a nasty Elite pack. While this would be a great moment to drop a Big Bad Voodoo to help you kill everything in sight (and ultimately avoid being killed yourself)….the skill is, of course, on cooldown. This can be a very aggravating experience! This isn't a dilemma we want players to face on a regular basis, so Vision Quest is getting redesigned for 1.0.4.

What’s Changing: We're keeping the focus of the skill on Mana regeneration, but we're going to shift the way you get that regeneration away from needlessly spamming cooldowns to attacking and doing damage. The first thing we're doing is increasing the baseline Mana regeneration of all witch doctors from 20 Mana per second to 45 Mana per second. Not only does this help to alleviate the "feast or famine" effect, it also acts as a big buff to witch doctors who choose to skip Vision Quest. As for Vision Quest itself, it will increase Mana regeneration by 30% for 5 seconds after dealing damage with Firebomb, Corpse Spiders, Poison Dart, or Plague of Toads. One of the fun things about this set up is that you can combine it with a Spider Queen (Corpse Spider rune) or a Pyrogeist (Firebomb rune) and they’ll keep Vision Quest active for you the entire time they’re out.

Of course, Vision Quest going down to 30% can seem scary. Base Mana regeneration is increased, and the new mechanics actually allow for Vision Quest to have a very high uptime, but is it enough?

As we continue internal testing, one of our checks to determine how well Vision Quest is performing is to see if a level 60 player can still summon hordes of stampeding Zombie Bears. While we can't accommodate every skill and build combination out there, the goal for Vision Quest is that a player who has chosen the right passives and gear will still be able to summon waves of stampeding bears for at least a few seconds. The new Vision Quest is a lot less "feast or famine" than before, which means some players won't be able to spam Zombie Bears for quite as long, but the tradeoff is you’ll have a more consistent stream of Mana coming in, and (more importantly) you'll have your cooldown-controlled skills available to use strategically for maximum effect. A more reliable Mana stream, being able to use your cooldowns, and having the option to use other active and passive skills seems like a better design for the class as a whole for the long term.

*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_firebomb.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_poisondart.png*us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_plagueoftoads.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_zombiecharger.png *us.media.blizzard.com/d3/icons/skills/64/witchdoctor_corpsespider.png​

Skill Options

In case you're wondering, we’re not touching Splinters or Zombie Bears this patch. While these are the two most popular witch doctor skills right now, it’s probably not just because people love the sound of Splinters or the look of Zombie Bears (though both of those are pretty cool). Instead, their popularity is likely due to how attractive these skills are, both in terms of damage output and overall feel. To help compensate and open up more build options, we’re buffing a lot of other skills to make them as appealing as Splinters and Zombie Bears.

Speaking of how a skill feels, the reason players avoid many of the lesser used witch doctor skills have more to do with the skill feeling "slow." For example, Firebomb, Plague of Toads, and Corpse Spiders all have animation timing issues which are being improved for 1.0.4. In general, all of these skills will cast faster, which will make the class feel snappier and more responsive. We're also doing a straight damage increase on many skills including (but not limited to) Acid Cloud, Firebats, Firebomb, and Spirit Barrage.

That wraps up the witch doctor, and all of our class previews! We hope you're excited about these changes and look forward to hearing your feedback.

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Introducing the Paragon System

Blizzard said:
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While working on patch 1.0.4, we came up with all sorts of ideas for ways to improve Diablo III. Some of them you’ve probably already seen, such as the general systems changes, the awesome buffs for Legendaries, and the improvements we’re making to the barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor, and wizard. The entire team really banded together to get as much into this patch as possible, and one of the exciting changes I’d like to tell you about today is called the Paragon system.

Two of the issues we’ve been thinking about while working on patch 1.0.4 have been what to do with Magic Find and how to give level-60 players who aren’t satisfied with the item hunt something more to strive for. I’m sure many of you are aware of the blog we posted proposing some different Magic Find gear-swapping solutions, as well as our general thoughts on how rewarding the game is once you hit level 60. The Paragon system is designed to help us address these concerns -- but before we get into exactly how it works, let’s go over these two core issues in a little more detail.

Magic Find

As you may remember, we posed a number of possible solutions to the gear-swapping issue and asked you to give us your feedback. While we saw some support for a couple of the options, what your responses ultimately told us was that although having to swap into Magic Find gear mid-fight annoyed some of you greatly, others were ambivalent, didn’t gear swap themselves, or -- in a few cases -- wanted to see gear-swappers penalized in some fashion. Those who do swap gear generally do so for the raw power advantage it gives, so we wanted any solution we went with to provide the same level of power. Overall, our analysis of the situation really hammered home one stark truth: we needed to come up with a way to make our Magic Find system more fun.

Level 60 Rewards

We understand that some players feel frustrated once they hit level 60 because they no longer feel like they’re making progress. It can be demoralizing to play for an hour, not get any drops, and also be out a big chunk of gold from repair costs. Your play session may not only end without an upgrade, it can wind up being a net loss. Everyone wants to feel like they’re making some progress when they log in, even if they don’t get that new sword.

*us.media4.battle.net/cms/gallery/N4RDG0MBQLNA1345154437688.png​

Introducing the Paragon System

The new Paragon system coming in patch 1.0.4 is designed to address Magic Find gear-swapping while providing players who’ve reached level 60 with an extended progression system. Here’s how it works:
  • After you hit level 60, any further experience you earn from killing monsters will begin to count toward Paragon levels.
  • There are 100 Paragon levels.
  • Every Paragon level will reward you with:
    • Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level.
    • 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find.
  • In addition, a distinctive increasingly-impressive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown.

We know that a lot of you out there are level 60 -- maybe on multiple characters -- and this system provides a way to make progress every time you log in to the game.

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/SELZSKAVDDOQ1345154470344.jpg​

To support the new system, Nephalem Valor (NV) will now also provide a 15% experience bonus per stack, applicable toward Paragon levels. The first Paragon level should take about as long as it took most players to get from level 59 to 60, and the experience requirement will rise from there. The time to reach the upper Paragon levels approximates the long-term time investment required to get a level 99 character in Diablo II.

… What Was That About Magic Find On Items?

While the benefits to progression are obvious, you may be asking how this impacts Magic Find on items. We wanted to find a solution that was not only very forgiving of gear swapping, but one that would ultimately help us slowly and gently move Magic Find off of items in the future. It’s such an intrinsically important stat to the core purpose of playing the game that tying it to gear -- which is a customization system in many ways -- is ultimately an approach that would continue to cause problems. We need to transition away from it, and do so in a way that doesn’t flip the entire game end-over-end.

With the Paragon system in place, we’re capping Magic Find and Gold Find to 300% (before Nephalem Valor). This means that without any Magic Find gear at all, you’ll hit the cap when you reach Paragon level 100. This way, you can continue wearing your current Magic Find gear as you slowly but surely work to gain Paragon levels. Eventually, once you hit Paragon level 100, you’ll have the freedom to completely focus every slot on stats that help your character kill stuff faster and stay alive longer. The idea is that if you’re currently swapping gear in and out for the Magic Find bonuses, you can continue to do so… but gain enough Paragon levels, and you won’t need to anymore.

*us.media5.battle.net/cms/gallery/VXFDNA3S9D0M1345154452638.jpg​

Phew…

The Paragon system is a fairly big addition to the game, and one we’re pretty excited about. On behalf of the entire Diablo III development team, we hope you enjoy the changes we’re making with patch 1.0.4, and we look forward to seeing you in-game when it releases. Stay tuned to Diablo3.com for the final patch notes and official launch announcement in the days ahead.

Source
 

a_k_s_h_a_y

Dreaming
it is totally, you can get cd key for 55 $ or something..
or used accounts for 30-40$.. best thing, to get used account from a reputed seller...
 
Developer Journal: Crowd Control Changes

Blizzard said:
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Shortly after Diablo III launched, I remember watching Jay play his barbarian. He was having a blast, killing monsters left and right, but something was bothering him. He was annoyed because Ground Stomp -- one of his favorite abilities -- got worse as he progressed to higher difficulty levels, and that his character felt weaker despite having better gear and more stat points.

We all agreed that the game needed to get harder at higher difficulty levels, but Jay didn't like this particular way that it was getting harder. Specifically, he didn't like that we diminished crowd control (CC) effects. We had discussed CC effects many times during development, and we felt the system we had got the job done, but Jay felt we could do better.

Before release, we'd designed the game so that CC skills would have diminished durations at higher difficulties -- for example, most CC skills have their effectiveness reduced by 65% in Hell and Inferno. Jay has never been a fan of the way Ground Stomp and other CC skills become less powerful as a result of diminishing effects, but he also knew that a system to limit CC was required to add challenge at higher difficulties. While we've wanted to improve CC for some time now, we had bigger fish to fry first (like adding the Paragon System and improving Legendary items), so we made a note to revisit CC effects in a future patch.

Why We Reduce CC

Fast forward to present day as we prepare for patch 1.0.5. Before I talk about what we're doing to buff CC skills while still allowing the game to get harder, first, let's go over some of the reasons why we diminish the effects of CC in Diablo III:
  • Monsters need time to do their thing to threaten you.
  • While infinite CC rotations can feel make players feel awesome, it's fleeting. If CC becomes too powerful, it can trivialize most major mechanics and the game can become boring.
  • Players in co-op have the potential to synchronize CC.

Of course, there are side effects to reducing CC to increase difficulty. One of the bigger issues we've seen is that, when it comes to mitigating incoming damage, CC skills rarely hold up against other options as you progress through Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. While a skill like Ground Stomp mitigates damage, let's you control the battlefield, and is really fun to use, the duration reduction at higher difficulties is really noticeable, making the skill far less effective. Ignore Pain, on the other hand, mitigates damage by reducing how much of it you take, regardless of difficulty level. It may not be as exciting to trigger, but it's more reliable in those later levels since its power isn't diminished.

The following graphs show a few examples of how CC skills become less widely used as players progress from levels 25, 45, and 59 * (the levels you're likely to be at Act III Normal, Act III Nightmare, and Act III Hell):

*us.media4.battle.net/cms/content_folder_media/QPH4B2VJSTIL1346800728537.jpg
*us.media3.battle.net/cms/content_folder_media/PNRQ1DO26FGR1346800728537.jpg
*us.media2.battle.net/cms/content_folder_media/BMCZ1QGXIW0Q1346800728528.jpg​

It's no surprise that as the effectiveness of a CC skill starts to diminish, its relative value (especially against skills that provide self-buffs) starts to diminish as well. This can make you feel less powerful as a player, but it also starts to push people into a narrower set of builds. After all, if one skill's power depreciates over time and another skill's power doesn't, the skill that retains its power can become much more appealing.

*These graphs illustrate the general trend of how, as players level up, CC skills become less popular, while skills that provide self-buffs become more popular. We opted to not include level 60 data in these graphs because there are many builds in Inferno that use CC skills successfully (for example, Frost Nova with Critical Mass). While we think these synergy-based builds are awesome, they’re still outliers and would ultimately skew the graph data from the overall trend.

Trial and Error

Crowd controlling monsters is not only tactically valuable, but we think it's really fun, too. Our goal was to recapture that feeling in the higher difficulties. We wanted players to feel strong and heroic when using their CC skills, no matter what level they are, and we came up with a few ideas on how to accomplish that.

Idea #1: Reduce the Duration of CC effects in Co-Op Games
The first solution we came up with was to reduce the duration of CC effects in co-op games only, and allow full durations in single-player. While this would provide a great experience for solo players and help prevent the issue of infinite CC rotations in group play, the obvious downside is that CC skills would still feel weak in co-op games.

There are already a few mechanics (such as On Kill triggers) that discourage players from teaming up with their friends, and we don’t want to pile on "my CC is less effective" as yet another reason to avoid co-op. So, we tossed that idea out and went back to the drawing board.

Idea # 2: Make Diminishing Effects Not as Strong
We also discussed making all CC effects shorter from the start, but make them not diminish (this would apply for both single-player and co-op games). For example, we talked about making Ground Stomp always last for 2 seconds, even when you first get it at level 1. Sure, it's not as good at first, but at least it doesn't get worse with time.

Of course, this means that we’d have to make CC less powerful across the board. Although it solves the original problem of CC skills feeling weaker over time, it creates the new problem of "my CC skills never feel powerful," which is arguably worse.

Idea #3: Diminishing Returns
Another idea we considered was implementing diminishing returns the way World of Warcraft does. So, your first stun gets full duration, the second stun is cut in half, the third stun is cut by 75%, and for the fourth stun and beyond you get "IMMUNE."

While this works for WoW, it just doesn't seem like a good fit for Diablo III. Not only does it feel really weird to get an "IMMUNE" message, but it also puts a lot of limitations on you in co-op games when the order in which you and your teammate use CC can matter a great deal.

Let's say you have a 5 second stun and your partner has a 1.5 second stun. If you go first, the monster is stunned for 5 + 0.75 seconds = 5.75 seconds total. If your partner goes first, the monster is stunned for 1.5 + 2.5 seconds = 4 seconds total. That seems like more micromanagement than we want to place in a fast-paced action game like Diablo III.

Additionally, there are currently a few methods of CC which are already very potent. For example, certain wizard and monk builds can maintain extremely heavy CC on enemies. As we examined CC, we realized we wanted to make CC skills feel good on their own, while still allowing these dedicated builds and combinations to be successful. In effect, we want to buff the baseline usage without hurting the players who have figured out certain potent combinations (though in the big picture we are still keeping an eye on that). This was yet another reason not to adopt the WoW diminishing returns system.

*us.media1.battle.net/cms/gallery/MO010OF9ESV11334191716770.png​

As you can see, every one of the solutions we discussed had a pretty noticeable downside, and we were kind of left hanging. We went over the reasons together and Jay basically said, "I know WHY we reduce the durations, but I still don't like it. Keep working on it."

Developers, Assemble!

As we started to wrap up development for patch 1.0.4, I decided to get a fresh perspective on the situation and hit up some designers on World of Warcraft and StarCraft II. One of the great things about working at Blizzard is being able to tap the creativity of other development teams, while still being able to do what is right for the Diablo franchise. Although they work on a different game, many of the designers around the company have been playing the heck out of Diablo III, and I figured they would be able to offer me some deeper insight into what they thought worked and what didn't.

After tossing out ideas for a while, we had a small epiphany: What if we used diminishing returns, but developed a different set of rules for Diablo III?

What if monsters just never went immune? And what if, instead of reduced % durations, the durations were reduced based on the length of the CC, so that it didn’t matter which order the CC effects were applied when playing co-op?

Here's the system we arrived at:

How It Works:
  • Monsters have a "CC resistance" that is stored on a per-monster basis.
  • The CC resistance starts at 0%. For every 1 second CC that is applied to the monster, the monster receives 10% CC resistance.
  • Monsters lose 10% of their CC resistance every second that they are not CC’d.
  • Elite monster CC resistance is capped at the current reduction values already active for Elites. In other words, CC resistance on most Elite monsters is capped to:
    • 35% in Normal
    • 50% in Nightmare
    • 65% in Hell
    • 65% in Inferno

What This Means For the Player:
  • From a high level, diminishing returns are applied on consecutive stuns to reduce their effectiveness.
  • You will never get an "Immune" message due to diminishing returns.
  • Diminishing returns on Elite monsters cap out at the same values that are currently applied to Elite reductions.
    • As previous mentioned, this means that near-infinite CC strategies will still work. We're okay with these strategies remaining viable, as we love how powerful it makes players feel. (That said, we will continue to keep an eye on these strategies and may make some changes in the future if we feel it will be better for the health of the game.)
  • If two players are in a co-op game, the order in which they apply their stuns doesn't generally matter, so you shouldn't feel totally "screwed over" by the other person applying their stun before yours.
  • A character using only the occasional CC every 10-15 seconds will always get the full duration in all difficulty levels.

A Free Demonstration

Let's provide some examples to show how this new system can play out in real scenarios.

Example 1:
  • A wizard freezes an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty for three seconds using Frost Nova. The monster is frozen for the full 3 seconds and now has 30% CC resistance (+10% resistance per second for 3 seconds = 30% CC resistance).
  • The moment the freeze ends, a witch doctor casts Horrify which fears the monster for 4 seconds. Since the monster has 30% CC resistance, it’s actually only feared for 2.8 seconds (3 seconds * 70% CC effectiveness = 2.8 seconds). The monster now has 58% CC resistance (30% from the first 3 second freeze + 28% from the 2.8 second fear).
  • After 5.8 seconds (freeze + fear duration), the monster is no longer CC’d. Suppose nothing happens for 5 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 50% of its CC resistance and is now at 8% CC resistance (58% - 50% = 8% CC resistance).
  • A monk casts Blinding Flash, applying a 3 second blind. The monster is blinded for 2.76 seconds (8% CC resistance off of 3 seconds) and the monster now has 35.6% CC resistance (which we could round off as necessary).

Example 2:
  • A monk casts Blinding Flash, applying a 3 second blind. The monster is blinded for 2.75 seconds (8.4% CC resistance off of 3 seconds) and the monster now has 35.9.8% CC resistance (which we could round off as necessary).
  • The first hit stuns the monster and lasts for a full 7 seconds, but adds 70% CC resistance.
  • The second hit also successfully stuns the monster, and lands 0.4 seconds later after the first hit. The 70% CC resistance is lowered to 50% because the game is currently on Nightmare difficulty, and Nightmare difficulty has a CC resistance cap of 50% -- so the stun is 3.5 seconds long. The 3.5-second stun gets applied, even though it is fully redundant with the existing 7-second stun. Since the new stun is shorter than the amount of time left on the current stun, no additional CC resistance is added. In effect, this second stun has no effect at all.

Example 3:
  • A party of four monks attempts to stun-lock an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty. They are all using Blinding Flash with the Self-Reflection rune, which blinds an enemy for 4 seconds.
  • The first monk casts Blinding Flash and the monster is blinded for 4 seconds. It also now has 40% CC resistance.
  • The second monk also casts Blinding Flash, but times it to land the instant the first one ends. It lasts 2.4 seconds and increases the CC resistance to 64%.
  • Both blinds wear off 6.4 seconds later. The third monk lands his Blinding Flash immediately afterwards, which lasts 1.44 seconds. This increases the monster’s CC resistance to 78.4%.
  • It's now been 7.84 seconds, and the fourth monk wants in on the action. She uses her Blinding Flash. Even though the monster’s CC resistance is technically at 78.4% by now, it's capped at 65% because of the CC resistance caps in Inferno. So, the 4 second blind actually lasts for 1.4 seconds. This adds another 14% CC resistance, bringing the final to 92.4%. (The effective resistance is still at the 65% cap, but the 92.4% is tracked under the hood for the stun resistance to wear off.)
  • The poor monster has now been blinded for a total of 9.24 seconds, and the monks are out of Blinding Flashes. :(
  • The next blind will occur when the first monk’s Blinding Flash comes off cooldown. Since Blinding Flash has a 15 second cooldown, and only 9.24 seconds have passed, the party has to wait for another 5.76 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 57.6% CC resistance, leaving it at 34.8%.
  • The first monk uses his Blinding Flash as soon as it comes off cooldown. The 4 second blind is reduced to 2.61 seconds thanks to 34.8% CC resistance, and the monster’s CC resistance goes up another 26.1% to 60.9%.

Example 4:

Scenario 1
  • Player 1 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 1 second. Monster has 10% CC resistance.
  • Player 2 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 5.4 seconds. Monster now has 64% CC resistance.

Scenario 2
  • Player 1 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 6 seconds. Monster now has 60% CC resistance.
  • Player 2 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 0.4 seconds. Monster now has 65% CC resistance.

(Scenario 1 & 2 demonstrate that this system allows consecutively chained CC effects to be applied in any order. In other words, the math is commutative.)

We feel these changes should make CC abilities much more appealing (especially in those later difficulty levels), and are currently targeting them to go out with patch 1.0.5. While that patch is still a ways away, we encourage you to experiment with the math in the meantime, ask us any questions you may have about how the new diminishing returns system will work, and share your feedback!

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