Nephalem Valor stacks are now restored whenever a player rejoins the last multiplayer game he/she was disconnected from

Damage done by the Arcane Sentry beam attack should now properly sync with the beam graphic

Items below iLevel 58 no longer drop in Inferno difficulty

Affixes on items will now roll their level based on the level of the monster killed (rather than the item’s level)

This is a seriously awesome patch.

The Infernal Machine is a device that will allow level 60 players to battle "uber” versions of some of Sanctuary's most nefarious bosses. While the rewards for defeating these bosses will be great, some assembly is required. Only the most powerful Nephalem can unlock the secrets to building the Infernal Machine, but once forged the device can be used to open portals to special encounters featuring not one, but two bosses which have been augmented from their original versions, both in terms of difficulty and appearance. Defeating each boss pair will provide players with extra items and gold, as well as a chance to find components for a new Legendary ring

Blizz, I never hated you. Questioned your motives and abilities? Certainly.

I am starting to think that you released this game a tad early.

Having said that, with expectations starting to be fulfilled, I am ecstatic at the changes to the game you are making to the game these last 2 patches.

Posted by Buzzell at 09/20/2012 06:10 PM

Nephalem Valor stacks are now restored whenever a player rejoins the last multiplayer game he/she was disconnected from

Damage done by the Arcane Sentry beam attack should now properly sync with the beam graphic

Items below iLevel 58 no longer drop in Inferno difficulty

Affixes on items will now roll their level based on the level of the monster killed (rather than the item’s level)

Thank you, Blizz. *tear drop*

Someone hand me a tissue for Christ's sake!!!

Its funny because I'm selling 42m gold right now for real moneys, and probably moving my main class to Wizard or DH.

There's a lot I do like about the patch notes and one enormous glaring red light that has been tentatively very upset.

-Making Legendaries pop on the minimap was expected, welcome and should've been there with Patch 1.04, in retrospect.
-Rares take 1 second to ID instead of 3. Thank goodness.

The impact of changing the affixes to depend upon the monster level instead of the item level laughably gets only one line as this has the potential to be a huge shift in item generation. If Monster Power doesn't artificially raise monster levels (and it might), only Act 3 and Act 4 Inferno monsters can drop the highest affixes. At this point, the highest affixes are the only items that have value on the AH. That would mean Act 1 and Act 2 monsters will be as useful as patch 1.04 Act 3 Hell farming. Do you know anyone farming Act 3 Hell? Me neither. I really hope they realized that and Monster power increases monster level or they just made a change that is so monumentally stupid it's difficult to put into words. People will grind Act 1 & 2 solely for experience and Infernal Machine parts without even bothering to pick up items at all. It has also put the final nail in the coffin for crafting. RIP Blacksmith.

That said, it's a boon to players that enjoy exclusively running Act 3. Now every item that drops can have affix level (henceforth alvl) 63.
-If Blizzard didn't make adjustments in that for jewelry, the market is going to flood with high-level jewelry in the days following the patch, relatively speaking. Do not buy any jewelry right now until this is made clear! If every ring and amulet that drops in Act 3 Inferno has the potential to roll the best mods, there's going to be a lot of great jewelry dropping game-wide.

If Blizzard hasn't artificially capped the alvl of Legendaries, ilvl 61-62 Legendaries and Set items might now be able to drop with alvl 63 mods as their Magic Properties. This means those weapons can now roll with 66%+ crit damage, 658+ Life on hit and full base stat mods. Assuming they don't fix the bug on Fire Walkers, they'll now be able to roll another 26 base stat points higher increasing their potential value even further. The Ouroboros amulet can now drop with full 65% Crit Damage further solidifying its place as the best Amulet in the game. Echoing Fury can now roll Crit Damage 100% + Socket or 658+ LOH. LOL.

ilvl 58 armor has the potential to be almost as good as ilvl 63 armor now by allowing alvl 63 mods to drop on ilvl 58-63 items. Every rare armor piece that drops in Act 3 can have 80 AR, 60 single resist, +397 Armor, 342 Life Regen or full base stats. Every shield that drops has the potential of those mods and 10% Crit Damage (hello 1H XBow DH tank!). ilvl 63 armor will still be potentially the very best since it has the highest base armor level, but otherwise don't be surprised to see rare armors even down to ilvl 58 on the elite players. ID'ing every piece of armor will be an adventure. ilvl 62 rare weapons will now be closer to ilvl 63 rare weapons since they can drop with 66+% Crit Damage and 658+ LOH.

I'm continually disappointed that they shift this game more towards Diablo 2 with each patch. I don't miss chugging potions, I can respec my skills every time I start a new game and boss runs aren't efficient, but nearly everything else screams Diablo 2.5. They could've released this game 5 years ago. I don't know if that speaks more towards how good Diablo 2 was with all of its patches or more towards a playerbase that just wants Diablo 2 again.

and you know what, this should have been fine if it was done from the initial game launch.
it makes perfect sense.

but doing it now is just cruel to all the players who can not farm Act III.

Ohhhh, what if there are stealth increases in difficulty for Monster Power? Like at mp7 there's an experience penalty for death. mp8 invulnerable minions start appearing again. mp9 brings back enrage timers. mp10 is anything goes with all affix combinations possible on all elites. That needs to happen.

More thoughts, however:

From a DH perspective:
Gameplay-wise I'm pretty pleased with the changes. I could give or take a lot of the skill changes, but I'm most excited by the changes to Spike Trap and they could be game changers. The Echoing Blast rune looks like it was designed for multiplayer as each Spike Trap will explode 3 times over 3 seconds thus matching the damage output of Scatter for an elite that stands still. Custom Engineering lets you have 6 Spike Traps out at a time which is also potentially incredibly powerful as it increases the damage while kiting to an obscene 1650% for 50 Hatred from double Scatter.

Other changes to DH that interest me:
Perfectionist - I can see how Perfectionist now giving players a 10% boost to Life, Armor and Resists will make a big difference makes it better, but there's no way it will muscle out any of the other skills.
Sentry - The 8 second cooldown has still doomed this skill to novelty status, as well. Give us 10 skillslots and it might find a place, but it will never replace something in the Top 6
Bola Shot - They addressed Bola Shot's explosion distance issue and it's worth a try again with the other runes
Chakram - LOL
Vault - Trail of Cinders was nerfed, but now stacks which is a fantastic compromise, in my opinion; allowing Vault to escape snares has basically eliminated Smoke Screen so that's a bit unfortunate, but it opens a skillslot for me
Strafe - Reducing the Hatred cost makes this viable without gearing your entire skillset and equipment to it so expect to see a few Whirlwind DH's popping up now; I could already piece together a near-infinite Strafe build and I'm relatively poor so infinite Strafe will be child's play for all elite players
Companion - This is completely a try it and see skill; I have no theory on how they'll play

Blizzard took away DH tanks with their proc coefficients in patch 1.04 and have gone a long way to bringing them back with Perfectionist and Boar companion adding 10% armor, 10% life and 25% AR. Shield mods have also improved which could make elite rare shields more affordable. That's a lot of damage reduction and the Boar even adds 155 / sec life regen. I'm going to try to this, particularly on lower Monster Power. It could be loads of fun.

So wait. For inferno players, monster power doesn't affect experience gained? So, for paragon leveling, you can just drop the difficulty to zero and faceroll for maximum leveling?

@Jhonka I believe Monster Power only affects experience for clvl 60 characters in Inferno. No sandbagging Act 3/4 Hell which do, in fact, still provide experience for clvl 60 players.

I bet your point about paragon leveling will still be true, though. You probably will get the most experience by choosing the highest mplvl that you can absolutely roll through rather than the highest mplvl you can play through. The downside is that if you're rolling through Act 1 or 2, the drops you'll get are only good for vending.

WW barbs takes a huge blow with the proc effeciency drop from Sprint - Run like the wind .

I just hope it's not that big a difference .

@ecocd You're definitely right about the drops. However, for someone with a relatively low paragon level, their time would be best served getting that extra damage/health/goldfind/magicfind from the first 30 paragon levels so they can progress to act 3 with higher monster power difficulty. They'll be spending more of their playtime at higher efficiencies overall. Now, once you hit paragon level 30-50, it probably becomes less useful overall.

I'm sure I could math it out to determine optimal statistics, but I really don't want to :-P

Crafting reagents can now be converted up to the next highest level at the Blacksmith at a ratio of 10:1

Can someone explain what this means.any idea or eg on how it works?

Posted by Storm at 09/23/2012 06:51 PM

Crafting reagents can now be converted up to the next highest level at the Blacksmith at a ratio of 10:1

Can someone explain what this means.any idea or eg on how it works?

It's going to be exactly the same as crafting jewels, except you just need 10 raw mats to upgrade to the next highest level. 10 Encrusted Hoofs -> Iridescent Tear. No word on whether there will be a gold cost involved. No one is entirely sure why they made this change since it's about 9 times easier to just find an Iridescent Tear than to find 10 Encrusted Hoofs.

Posted by ecocd at 09/23/2012 07:21 PM

Posted by Storm at 09/23/2012 06:51 PM

Crafting reagents can now be converted up to the next highest level at the Blacksmith at a ratio of 10:1

Can someone explain what this means.any idea or eg on how it works?

It's going to be exactly the same as crafting jewels, except you just need 10 raw mats to upgrade to the next highest level. 10 Encrusted Hoofs -> Iridescent Tear. No word on whether there will be a gold cost involved. No one is entirely sure why they made this change since it's about 9 times easier to just find an Iridescent Tear than to find 10 Encrusted Hoofs.

It's probably to make it so lower level ones aren't completely useless. Instead of only picking up ilvl 61+ blues to salvage, I could pick all every one and then just convert the materials up to exquisite essences.

Okay, that makes sense. It doesn't hurt anyone that wants to use the AH - just another recipe to ignore. For anyone playing self-found, they have a new method for using the materials they need for crafting other than just selling them. I think 10:1 is a bit steep, but who am I to question Blizzard's wisdom on such things.