Yesterday Blizzard have released a post on their website outlining some of the details of Patch 1.0.4 for Diablo 3. People were extremely hyped for Diablo 3 but was severely letdown with the way the launch for the game was handled. After reading the new patch preview we can now have a bit of faith restored in the game and maybe will end up returning to give it a try after this new content comes out.
We have gone over the details of the post and have posted the major factors below:
Co-Op changes:
- They are removing the magic and gold find averaging from multiplayer games so that everyone benefits from their own magic and gold find stats.
- They are lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in the current lobby to a flat 75%; they stated that this should make enemies more manageable in co-op games.
Monster changes:
- They are increasing the health of all normal monsters on Inferno difficulty mode by 5-10% as they felt they were a little too easy to steam-roll through.
- Along the same note they are lowering the health of Champion and Rare monsters by 10-25% and changing specific affixes to make them a little more manageable.
- Changing some of the more annoying affixes. They used Fire Chains and Shielding as examples.
Weapons:
- They are changing all raw weapon damage values on all level 61-62 weapons so that they are now able to roll damage that reaches the top end of level 63.
- They are changing two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes specifically to compensate for the loss of stats due to not being able to use an offhand.
- As well as the affix compensation they are changing the way damage is calculated on a few damage over time spells for two handers. An example was given stating that if a skill currently does 75% weapon damage over 5 seconds and the weapon has a 2.0 weapon speed it will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds.
Efficiency and Challenge:
- They are removing all enrage timers and healing to full health behaviors from Champions and Rares. They stated that this would allow people to farm more efficiently without having to avoid certain packs because they cannot kill them.
- They are reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%. (YAY my personal favourite!)
Legendaries:
- There wasn’t much information given on Legendaries other than the fact that there will be a rundown given in the coming weeks.
- They did state that the changes will not affect current Legendary items and will only affect the Legendary items dropped or crafted after the new patch goes live.
Class Changes:
- They have said that there is a lot of changes coming to each class and in the coming weeks they will be outlining the changes. They have stated they will be buffing underused skills to be more competitive with other skills in that category. Their example was Bola shot for the Demon Hunter being buffed to be more on par with Hungering Arrow.
- They are buffing the underused runes to make them more competitive and allow more build diversity.
- Damage oriented resource spenders are slated to be receiving buffs to make them more viable.
- They have also stated that they are trying to maintain the balance between builds but allow the players to have more diversity on the them rather than having every player follow a cookie cutter build.
Whew! That is a lot of changes coming to Diablo 3 in Patch 1.0.4 but hopefully this changes the game for the better and allows people to play the game with their own style.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6923456/104_Systems_Preview-8_10_2012
Written by Sean McIntyre
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