Diablo 3 Blog Guide

Bashiok has posted about end game solutions on the official forums. Looks like we will be seeing changes to end game in upcoming patches, as well as PVP in 1.1. Below is the full post.

Blizzard blue tracker: July 4, 2012.

We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now.

We're working toward 1.0.4, which we're really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we'll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we're of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas. I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they're not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it's a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out.

Auction House or Not Web App

Also check out the Auction House or Not web app (made by postm) that we added to the tools section today. It helps you determine quickly and easily whether you should sell an item on the AH or vendor it. We already have a great Auction House, Salvage or Sell guide in the guides section, but this tool makes determining what to put on the AH even easier. Note when using this, make sure you use it as a starting point, not as a final say in whether you sell an item or not. Always double check on the AH to make sure the item you have isn't worth a lot before scrapping.

July 3, 2012: Blizzard is taking suggestions on how to improve magic find gear swapping. Below are 6 options they have proposed. Stop by their feedback thread to give your thoughts about what you think would work best!

Here is a Monk 1.0.3 guide submitted by Nmity.



Hello again! Just a short one today recapping on the stats / gear you will want to use on your Monk after the 1.0.3 attack speed nerf and the monster damage nerf. This guidelines everything you need to know in terms of gearing for acts 2-4 on the Inferno difficulty.

Today's hotfix has increased the Neph drop rate for all acts in Inferno. Bosses are now guaranteed to drop at least 1 rare with 4 stacks of Nephalem Valor and 2 rares with 5 stacks.

Here are the hotfixes:

June

• The drop rates for high-end items (items level 61-63) have been increased for Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty and Acts I – IV of Inferno difficulty:
  • The new approximate drop rates are as follows:
    • Hell – Act III and Act IV
      • iLvl 61: 9% to 13.9%
      • iLvl 62: 1.9% to 3.45%
      • iLvl 63: 0% (no change)
    • Inferno – Act I
      • iLvl 61: 17.7% to 23.9%
      • iLvl 62: 7.9% to 12.6%
      • iLvl 63: 2.0% to 4.8%
    • Inferno – Act II
      • iLvl 61: 18.6% to 23.3%
      • iLvl 62: 12.4% to 18.6%
      • iLvl 63: 4.1% to 9.3%
    • Inferno – Act III and Act IV
      • iLvl 61: 24.1% to 27.1%
      • iLvl 62: 16.1% to 21.7%
      • iLvl 63: 8.0% to 16.3%

• Bosses are now guaranteed to drop at least 1 Rare item for players with 4 stacks of Nephalem Valor and at least 2 Rare items for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor

• Fixed a bug with several items that would allow those items to block pathing when dropped on the ground
• Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when a player was interacting with environment objects (e.g. opening chests or clicking on a lectern)
• Fixed several additional game and service crashes

Blizzard Blue Tracker: June 27, 2012

In general we tend to not provide release dates or specific timeframes for patches due to the complexity of the updates, and the possibility that we’ll discover an issue that keeps us from releasing it on time. We discovered a few such issues late into the testing of 1.0.3b, which means it won’t hit this week as previously mentioned.

However, we know that a number of changes in 1.0.3b have been highly anticipated, and so we spent the better part of today pulling specific changes that did not run into testing issues out of 1.0.3b, and turning them into hotfixes. These include the Inferno drop increases among a couple others, and will be applied with off-peak rolling restarts tomorrow morning. We’ll also be updating theJune hotfix blog with specific changes (including new drop rates) tomorrow morning after we manage to wrangle up a cup of coffee.

Blizzard Blue Tracker: June 25, 2012

Diablo III Patch 1.0.3a – v.1.0.3. 10235

The latest client patch notes can be found here.
Visit our Bug Report forum for a list of known issues.
The most recent hotfixes can be found here.

Classes

• Witch Doctor
  
  • Bug Fixes
    
    • Zombie Charger 
      
      • Skill Rune – Zombie Bears
        
        • Fixed a bug where Zombie Bears were unable to attack targets on slopes
        
        
        • Zombie Bears should no longer become stuck on objects with which they shouldn’t have collision

Items

• General
  
  • Equipped items will now take "wear-and-tear" durability damage at half the previous rate
    
    • Please note that durability loss as the result of normal combat is different from the 10% durability loss characters will incur when they die. Equipped items have always suffered durability loss while fighting, and we are simply slowing the rate at which the loss occurs.
• Bug Fixes
• • Fixed a bug that was causing Unique monsters to not drop the appropriate amount of loot when slain
  • Fixed a bug with linking items with 3 gem sockets
  • It is no longer possible to create fake achievement links

Bug Fixes

• General
  
  • Fixed a bug that was causing the “Switch Hero” button to occasionally disappear after leaving a game while in town
  • Fixed several gold and leveling exploits
• Fixed several game and service crashes (for Mac and PC)

Act 1 - 4 Inferno Elite Hotspot (Farming) Guide submitted by Nmitty.




Hello again everybody! This guide is covering acts 1 through 4 elite pack farming routes! These are all of the farming routes I've been using since 1.0.3 has hit and they all have a great amount of elite packs over a short period of time farming. Hopefully this helps you progress more quickly to higher acts or just helps you farm more elite packs much more efficiently!

Act 1: 0:00
Act 2: 5:45
Act 3: 9:46
Act 4: 15:10

Build in the video: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#blSjOR!XYc!bYZaZb

Energy Armor can be swapped for anything defensive if need be, passive talents can also be changed for anything else you wanted! Going into detail on the Wizard guide coming up!

Loot Data for 111 Elite Kills in Inferno submitted by derick.

Here is another Inferno Act 1 Farming Guide submitted by ND.

Description: A1 is fine for farming, it's fast and can drop the big ticket items, just a lot of time farming is necessary. In the past 2 days I've had 2 5mil drops in act 1, very decent for about 10 hours farming.

1. Port to northern highlands, check for the Watchtower dungeon along the NW wall of the zone (it's small, takes maybe 10s). If it's not there, remake. If it's there, clear it for 1-5 stacks.
   
   I anticipate the number of packs here will be nerfed soon, though often times I just find 1 pack. Additionally I find the dungeon has about a 60% spawn rate.
2. Check northern highlands (small area, 0-2 packs).
3. Run to the hunting grounds (small area, 0-1 packs). it's NE of the highlands 100% of the time.
4. Run to Leorics courtyard (small area, 0-2 packs) it's NW of the hunting grounds 100% of the time.
5. Check cemetary dungeons, I kill one pack per dungeon and then port out and go to the next cemetary dungeon. The reason for this is that each dungeon can spawn 1-2 packs but it's rarely 2 and sometimes they can be quite large areas, not worth the time to clear them totally.
6. Festering woods - clear the 2 dungeons there for 2 more packs, kill packs that are out in the general area if you come across them. I usually find 1, but the range I believe is 0-2 in the general area.
7. Halls levels 1, 2, then the jail area (still deciding if this run through is worth it, it takes time but you usually find 1), then halls level 3 and butcher.

Rinse repeat. I do it in about a half hour or shorter if I remain focused. I'm a barb running a normal sword and board build with sprint for faster clearing. I ignore normal mobs unless there's a huge pack then I kill them for fun.

Blizzard Blue Tracker: June 22, 2012

1) Champion packs over Bosses – I understand why you want to push people to fight champion packs. In Diablo 2 they were almost entirely avoided for the sake of getting to the bosses faster for better loot. However you must realize that MANY people find boss fights more entertaining? It also goes against the logic of some random monster is more dangerous than the greatest battle commander in all of the burning hells! Why is blizzard adamant that players avoid bosses and fight champion mobs when the outcry (for the most part) is the opposite?

Ideally, we'd like both Champion packs and bosses to be satisfying. It's a tricky balance to get right, though, when you consider that a) player's gear is always improving, b) new builds and techniques are being discovered pretty regularly, and c) Champion packs are random and bosses are predictable. 

In general, random content (i.e. Champion packs) tends to be more enjoyable over the long-haul because it helps to ease off some of the repetition -- not just in terms of what you're fighting and how you're fighting it, but also in terms of seeing different environments, dungeons, and events. Predictable content (i.e. bosses) usually doesn't have that same appeal, at least not for everyone. Not only does the environment remain the same for boss fights, but strategies can be optimized and practiced to the point of efficiency, which often makes killing bosses the path of least resistance to the greater reward. Unfortunately, in the case of bosses, following the path of least resistance can sometimes result in gameplay feeling too repetitive.

Pre-patch 1.0.3, getting a 5 stack of Nephalem Valor, doing a boss, and then resetting the game and repeating the process was considered to be most optimal. This is probably more interesting than simply doing boss runs only, but we wanted to get players out into the world and exploring more of the Acts. To encourage that, we moved some of the reward from bosses to packs. We're pretty happy with the results of this change, but we're also concerned that players appear to be skipping bosses completely, so it's possible we went too far. Again, it's a delicate balance. 

Right now, we're keeping a close eye on how players are adapting in-game to the change as well as continuously reading your feedback online.

2) Valor buff. Diablo 3 was advertised as having a wide variety of skills that can be swapped in and out at any time, even in battle (with a small delay for use). This allowed greater variety in the abilities that champion mobs could have and provide greater challenges for the player. You also then provided a Valor buff that is supposed to encourage players to kill more champion packs. But oddly you choose to have the valor buffs be removed if the player changes their skills (or even moves a skill on the hot bar from one position to another). This goes against the entire design of the buff and the goal of having players kill as many champion packs as possible, Why was this decision made and with what logic?

This was actually a decision we made based off player feedback. On the one hand, there's a lot of enjoyment in being able to swap your skills at will and tailor your builds to the environment around you. On the other, there’s also gameplay to finding a build that really works for you in a variety of situations. 

During beta, we received a lot of feedback from players who wanted to be able to swap skills any time. We also had a large number of players who wanted to have a sense of their characters "build," or some sort of build identity -- especially at later levels. We understood both points of view, so with Nephalem Valor you can still swap a skill out at any time, but there is a penalty for doing so (i.e. losing your stack). 

As sort of an aside, we know that it can be SUPER frustrating for players who use Elective Mode to lose an NV stack due to a poorly-placed click near your Skill bar. Because of this, we're looking to add an action bar lock for Elective Mode in an upcoming patch. 

3) The IAS nerf was handled poorly in my opinion. I completely understand WHY the nerf was needed and probably agree with the logic that it needed to be changed. However HOW it was handled was a dropped ball. I believe that the best way to handle the situation was to bring in either diminishing returns or a hard cap (like run speed) that a player cannot go over. This allows people to still gain value from their RMAH purchases without feeling ripped off and also discourages people from stacking the stat over other stats which you want to be a greater focus for the character. It also maintains value in the IAS items for future sales. Why was the IAS nerf not handled in this manner?

When we posted the Patch 1.0.3 Preview, we actually mentioned that we were considering several options to address IAS. Here's the actual quote from the blog, just for context: 

There are two different solutions we’re considering to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed. The first is to simply reduce the value on all the items to their desired values. In general our desire is to never change items as that makes them feel less concrete, but the upside is you would still be able to look at an item and know exactly what you are getting. The other approach is to change the formula used for attack speed aggregation so that stacking attack speed from multiple slots suffers from diminishing returns. The downside of that approach is that it introduces yet another hidden modifier on an item property (and many people dislike hidden modifiers), and complicates the already difficult decision of item gearing.

As you can see, diminishing returns were on the table. If you look at the blog comments, though, some players said they liked the idea of diminishing returns while others said liked reducing the stat value instead. In the end, we felt that hidden diminishing returns might have made you feel better about your items, but that it addresses the issue with IAS in a much "sneakier" way. Feedback already told us that players disliked hidden modifiers, and we were concerned that diminishing returns would make the gearing process more complicated. 

It was a complicated situation, and there were pros and cons to both solutions (as noted above). As a result, it was a difficult decision to make, but we opted for the more direct, upfront approach of just reducing the stat value. 

4) lackluster skills. Nether tentacles. Fix, bug, nerf or whatever you want to call it was probably deserved and required. However I have a design question based around the outcome of this change. If a skill is changed, updated or fixed to a point where not a single player wants to use that skill anymore wouldn’t that be a bad change or too drastic? Will further skill changes(give wiz tornadoes love) be in the near future to give people more options than just pick the next best skill available?(my hopes are to have several options of equal strength, currently I don’t feel that way with the DH setup)

We're planning on doing a lot of skill tuning in patch 1.0.4. We're also planning on explaining/previewing those changes in a developer blog in the near future.

5) The pots/breakables Magic find nerf. It seems from the players standpoint that this is an odd change. Nobody that I saw was complaining about having to put on magic gear to maximize their chances and opportunities with pots and breakables. Yet the reasoning given was that you felt it was unfun for the players. Can you elaborate a bit more on this as I feel the players think differently.

After reviewing all the feedback we received following this change, we'd like to add items back onto breakables as well as allow Magic Find to affect those drops. That said, the issues that motivated those changes still exist, so we want to make sure that when/if we do revise those changes, it doesn't result in us being right back where we started. We don't want players avoiding monsters altogether in favor of farming breakables, and we don't want players feeling like they need to always switch to their Magic Find set before opening Resplendent Chests and other environment objects. I don't have an ETA to share right now for when those changes might be made.

6) Stat stacking. It was mentioned that blizzard does not want players to stack stats in a way that they feel it is a must skill over the base stats such as Dex or Str or Vit. If that is true, why do barbarians and monks (and probably everyone else now after the current changes) have to stack resist all up to ridiculous levels just in order to survive?

I can't recall who said this, or where it was said, but that's not our current philosophy. If players want to stack other stats over Dex/Str/Int/Vit/etc, or feel as though they need to in order to get the most of out their game time, then that's okay. 

If you feel as though the current stat model isn't ideal, then please let us know -- and provide alternative solutions if you're able!

7) IAS Side effects. The IAS nerf has had a few side effects which I am not sure were considered in the process. Monks and some barb builds relied on IAS to provide adequate healing through either leech or on hit healing abilities. However with the IAS nerf many are finding that this is no longer a viable path. Is there anything being done internally to consider this unintended consequence?

Actually, it was quite the opposite. This was one of the main reasons for the IAS nerf. In fact, if it wan't for those additional side effects, and only about DPS, we likely wouldn't have changed IAS at all. 

Again, as stated in the Patch 1.0.3 Preview:

While we don’t have an issue with there being important stats, Increased Attack Speed in particular has secondary effects on mobility in combat, resource generation and resource consumption. We want there to be options and considerations for how you gear up, and one uber trump-everything stat can really work against choice and options.

Here's the link again: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262208/

8) The repair cost increase I believe is also a fair change; however the unfair part of this change was to the wear and tear of doing battle. Now I know that it has already been stated that this is being looked at for an update, are you able to share any reduction values or ranges that are being considered internally? (ex. 50%, 75%...)

I've mentioned this in other threads already, but we agree with you and we're looking at reducing the durability hit you take from normal wear-and-tear. No values to share at this time, though. 

06/21/2012 07:02 AMPosted by Gremble

9) Who are you kidding, all the WD re-rolled Barb or DH already!

See response to #4. 

10) Boss over tuning. In the recent patch there was significant changes done to some boss fights. However there appears to be a bit of over tuning done in a few cases (in others much needed difficulty improvements). In two cases, Seigebreaker and Cydea however there appears to be a bit of excess difficulty added to the point that in most cases the fights are impossible(for some classes). In seigebreakers case the addition of dmg reflect with a short enrage timer makes him quite the fight to handle on ones own. Cydea has had her little spiders amped up in an insidious way where they spread out and virtually refuse to attack or follow the player unless he/she goes near them. This causes the player to have to fight through them to get back to cydea, however once enough spiders are killed cydea auto jumps off the screen and spawns more spiders. Essentially making the fight a burn her down before she jumps or you lose fight. Are any hot fixes or minor updates being planed to fine tune these updates or do you feel that the current difficulty is appropriate?

I just asked Wyatt Cheng this question and his response was (and I quote): "Bosses are exciting punctuation marks in your Champion and Rare pack wasteland."

I'll be honest and say that I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'll follow up with him a little later once he's feeling a little less Mad Max and get back to you. :P

06/21/2012 06:08 AMPosted by Tealeaves

11) Favourite snack while playing? I love me some fuzzy peaches

Lylirra: Beef Jerky
Bashiok: Beef Jerky
Zarhym: Beef Jerky
Wyatt: Beef Jerky

If you're a jerky fan like us, I highly recommend Alien Fresh Jerky (especially their Whiskey Jerky) and Smoked Meats. 

12) The quitters. Many of my friends who played the game have found the recent patch changes to create an unfun atmosphere within the game. They have recently stopped playing entirely in some cases and in others have become frustrated and play much less. While I respect that this is “your game” and you will present the vision that your team has come up with. Are any considerations being made to the players who recently disliked the changes?

We're definitely taking all feedback into consideration. In addition to that, we're already planning to make some changes based on that feedback. 

13) GAH. 13 is my lucky number so this will be the last question. Due to the recent changes and increase cost of playing the game (gold wise) players have to maximize their income to offset these changes. One of the major ways players make money is through the gold auction house. Is there any consideration being made to increasing the limit of 10 items per account that can be up for sale to help compensate for this increase in costs?

No plans at this time.


Also about low loot drop chance in Act 3:


I unfortunately don't have any specifics to share just yet, but we agree they are low and are looking at adjusting them. We should have more details early next week.

Diablo 3 Item Primer submitted by Delphic.

• Item - What the item is, as well as its iLvl. This is also where base damage and base armor are stored. If you look at the white version of an item, you can see its base values. Item type also determines what affixes an item can get.
• Affix - Called properties in the crafting window. Blue almost always 1-3 of these. Rare always have 4-6 of these. They are things like "of Pain", "of the Lion" and "Cruel". In addition to primary affixes, there are secondary affixes with lower stats, this is why rings have half the stats of amulets.
• Mods - Affixes are actually a collection of one or more mods. For example, there is a +Dex mod. There is also a +Dex affix that has only a +Dex mod associated with it. There is however a +Dex/Vit affix which has 2 mods associated with it, one for +Dex and one for +Vit. Basically, a mod is always only one additional thing where is an affix can be a grouping of things.

• Step 1: An item type is chosen randomly based on the iLvl drop range and chances of the area. This includes both the category of item (gloves in this example) and the item type (name and iLvl). So if the game has decided to drop a pair of gloves it would then choose which gloves to drop out of all possible gloves in iLvl range 50-63 (assuming inferno act 1)
  • All possible gloves: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/gloves/#type=common
  • Stats determined so far: iLvl, Base Armor (the lowest armor value in the range on the link above), possible affixes
  • If you look at the crafted items you'll notice they have a single armor value instead of a range, this is the base armor value.
• Step 2: Now the magical nature of the item is determined. This is the part where your magic find comes in. A calculation happens and the item either stays white, becomes magic (blue), rare (yellow) or legendary (orange). The higher your Magic Find value, the higher chance of the item to drop as magic/rare/legendary.
  • If the item is white, it gets an armor bonus or some of the static bonuses such as "balanced" attack speed bonuses that white items occasionally get.
  • If the item is blue, it gets assigned 1-3 affixes randomly based on iLvl. The iLvl of the item is the maximum level of the Affixes assigned to it. Affixes are likely weighted that it is more likely to get a Affix level closer to the iLvl.
  • If the item is rare, it gets assigned 4-6 affixes randomly based on iLvl. The iLvl of the item is the maximum level of the Affixes assigned to it. Affixes are likely weighted that it is more likely to get a Affix level closer to the iLvl. Ilvl also affects how many affixes an item gets (higher iLvl items can have more affixes).
  • If the item matches a base item of a Legendary (all legendaries have a white item that they are based on) then the appropriate static and random affixes are assigned to it.
  • Affixes are restricted by item type.
  • Stats determined so far: What the item will have a bonus to, but not how much.
  • For our example, lets say a pair of iLvl 61 gloves has dropped with 4 affixes chosen as follows: Dex, VitDex, Haste (Attack Speed), DR (Armor)
• Step 3: Once the item has had its affixes chosen, the mods that belong to those affixes are applied, randomized and combined
  • Dex affix for iLvl 61 has a range of 130-149
  • DexVit affix for iLvl 61 has a range of 39-124 for the Dex mod abd 39-124 for the Vit mod
  • Haste (Attack Speed) affix for iLvl 61 has a range of 6%-7% for the attack speed bonus mod
  • DR (Armor) affix for iLvl 61 has a range of 286-322 for armor bonus mod
  • Stats determined so far: All
• Step 4: Mods are combined into a single value
  • Total +Dex range becomes 169-273 which is a combination of two separate random rolls, one from the Dex and one from the DexVit affixes

• When Blizzard nerfed attack speed, they reduced the range of possible attack speed bonuses on the Haste and HasteSecondary affixes. Quivers have a "built in" attack speed bonus similar to armor or damage which was not affected. This is the same reason you can't search for items by armor/damage/attack speed (for quivers) on the auction house. This may have also caused the haste value to be "re-rolled", so if before the range was 14-15 and you had a 15 the range may now be 6-7 and you may have a 6. If this were any other stat with a larger range I'm sure they would not be able to have made this change so quickly/easily.
• When Blizzard improves legendary items they will likely make a number of changes. Remember that legendaries have a different set of affixes that they chose from for their "special" stats and also have a normal set of affixes too. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/stone-gauntlets has a few static, a few random special and a few normal affixes. What will likely happen is that blizzard will do one of the following:
  • If they chose to change the range of existing special affixes then those item values will be re-rolled affecting older items. This likely won't happen. Instead they will likely:
  • Change the "blueprint" of legendaries to use new better special affixes. Any new legendaries that drop will use these new better special affixes which may have a different set of mods or a higher range of them. Old items will not be affected as they will still have the old affixes assigned to them.
  • Change the "blueprint" of legendaries to have additional special or normal affixes. Any new legendaries that drop will have these additional special/normal affixes. Old item will not be affected as they have already been generated.

• You can only have one affix of each type per item. There are also likely other limitations that I'm not aware of.
• All 2 stat affixes such as DexVit, IntStr, etc... are actually one affix so you can only have one of these
• Affixes levels are "up to" the iLvl of the item and are likely weighted to be closer to the iLvl but not necessarily at it

Inferno Melee Wizard Critical Mass Build submitted by beirtec.

• Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WOXYPk!agb!aYaZZZ
• My Stats: http://i.imgur.com/2TBql.jpg
• My Gear: http://i.imgur.com/HJdbt.jpg

Monk Inferno Act 2 - 4 Guide submitted by Nm.

Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#biXgYh!ZXU!ZZbaca

Also check out his Monk Inferno Act 1 Farming Guide.

Note: Turn up your volume because the sound is a bit tough to hear.

Monk Guide - Farming Act 1 - Preparing for Acts 2 - 4 submitted by Nm.

Blizzard commented on the IAS nerf and whether other things will be nerfed as well. Looks like it was just a one time thing, and they won't be touching other major gameplay mechanics unless there is an "extreme situation". Below is the full post as well as a few other comments about champion affixes, repair costs, magic finding gear, and more.

Blizzard Blue Tracker: Updated June 21, 2012

IAS Nerf:

There are plenty of stats we could have nerfed, there are many (some which have been mentioned) which are probably skewing itemization and build variety. We nerfed IAS because it was probably the worst offender, and because unlike most other stats has a bigger impact on mobility and resources. We know build variety is still affected by a number of issues and factors. We plan to really attack that problem in 1.1, but we didn't think IAS could sit as it was until then.

We don't want people to be afraid of nerfs, and ... I guess maybe I can try to get that across by saying we could have nerfed a bunch of stats that probably deserve it to some degree, but we didn't (aren't you thankful!?), because we don't believe our design approach should be constantly noodling with really important things, like stats. It should only be when we have an extreme situation developing, and we felt that was the case with IAS.

Champion affixes:

There's a difference between saying "that's an unfair affix combo" and "I can't beat this affix combo" (yet). Certain affix packs will be harder than others. The variance in randomness and in the difficulty of the packs is completely intentional and we're happy with where things are right now. 

Having to restart a game or skipping packs altogether is also totally fine. As you become more powerful, finesse your builds, and develop a variety of tactics to use in different situations, you'll be able to kill more monsters. If you could kill everything uniformly the first time you stepped into an Act, you'd have a really limited sense of progression and the feeling of becoming "more powerful" wouldn't be as present. The design intent is that some affix packs will unbeatable for you at first, but then you'll come back later and get your sweet (and well deserved) revenge. We feel that making every affix combo equally difficult would take away the satisfaction of overcoming the more challenging combos later on. 


No one is going to like additional repair costs. I'm not sure how any feedback would be "Great, I really love paying more for repair costs." however, we have seen enough feedback and data to show that the ratio is pretty good as long as people aren't throwing their character's corpses against enemies. Death has meant nothing for a very long time now. It's going to take some getting used to and just understanding that death is no longer something that just happens, it should be something you're really fighting to avoid, and potentially being smarter about tackling content you can actually tackle.

That said, we think the normal wear and tear is maybe too high. Just fighting is probably too expensive, and we're looking at potential adjustments there.

Magic Finding Gear:

Ultimately, we think players running around with an entire set of Magic Find gear and swapping out those pieces every time they want to open a chest, smash a pot, or click on a weapon rack isn't really all that fun, and we didn't want the game's mechanics to make players feel like they needed to do that in order to be the most efficient. We also don't want players avoiding fighting monsters just to run after shiny clicky things (we want you to do both). In both situations, this is something we wanted to discourage and we implemented changes we felt would accomplish this. 

We're already working on another developer blog that delves more deeply in to our current philosophy regarding Magic Find gear swapping, why it's our current philosophy, and how we're looking at improving Magic Find in general, so that will probably provide insight on this particular topic. No solid date on that blog yet, but it's definitely coming soon(tm). 

Additional Changes: 

While I'm unable to say one way or another whether "this is where things will stay," we're definitely not opposed to making additional changes. Iteration is big part of our design philosophy, and we will continue to make improvements to the game (maybe not forever, but definitely until we feel that everything is in a good place). For example, we're currently looking at a number of solutions for how to curb the popular practice of players swapping out their normal gear for Magic Find gear right before a kill to min/max their efficiency. In general, this isn't something that those players seem to particularly enjoy, but instead feel compelled to do because of how efficient it is.* Also, to be very clear, this practice is not intended. (The developer blog I was talking about previously will go into the solutions we're considering in much more detail.)

There will always be situations where our definition of "fun" and some players' definitions of "fun" will vary, but in general our goal when making changes like these is to improve the overall game experience. We might not always succeed, but this is what we strive for. For environment objects and destructible objects, it became an issue of players repeatedly choosing to avoid killing monsters in favor of smashing pots. Not because they particularly liked smashing pots or didn't particularly like killing monsters, but because it what was most efficient. We want you to kill monsters. We also want you to not have to worry about dragging along a separate set of Magic Find gear just for the sake efficiency gains. Did we succeed with these changes? Maybe. We think it was the right move, but it's only a day out from the patch and we're still waiting for all the feedback to settle. 

By the way, when players say things like "Blizzard just wants us to play the game the way they want us to play it," that's both true and not true -- but maybe not in the ways that you think. We definitely encourage experimentation, exploration, and variety. We've seen a lot of interesting tactics and builds and play styles develop since launch, and we're still seeing players find new ways to progress their characters. And that's really freaking cool. What we don't want to have happen, though, and where we're most likely to step in make changes, is when a certain tactic or a single way to play becomes the ONLY way to play. (Treasure Goblin farming is a another good example of this. For most, it was fun mostly because of the rate of loot reward...but, you weren't really fighting all that much, and because it was one of the most rewarding tactics out there, that meant a lot of players were driven to play that way, even if they didn't want to.)

*I realize this not exactly what you were suggesting, but I wanted to make it clear that we're not opposed to making further changes to a specific mechanic if we feel that it's not where it should be. 

Destroying Objects: 

For clarity, we never said destroying environment objects wasn't fun. You can still smash objects for a chance at gold drops, or just because you want to. Players feeling like they needed to always carry around MF gear and switch to that gear before destroying environment objects in order to be as efficient as possible, however, was something that was repeatedly communicated (in these forums even) as something that wasn't enjoyable -- and we agreed.

Inferno Monk DW Combination Strike Build submitted by KL.

Long story short, I made an old Combination Strike build / video awhile back. It worked up to A2i... But A3 / A4 demanded I switch in Hard Target to live.

So I'm pleased to announce that once more this build works!



Build:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#UbkYXg!XgU!ZZacba

Yeah, it can stand to be tweaked still, but that's about it for now. If / when I get more crit and crit dmg I'll be switching out Blinding Flash for Sweeping Wind - Cyclone probably, at least for a bit to test it. (Who doesn't love tornados everywhere?)

Gear:

My gear: http://i.imgur.com/BxH5w.jpg

It's not amazing, and the crit stuff I bought on a whim so it's even worse. In the future, I'd love to drop my fist weapon for something with crit dmg / life on hit. That weapon is just an afterthought, an item that didn't sell, but I put it on to start DWing.

But yeah, what're you gonna do post-1.03, sit back, take the attack speed nerf, go back to 1h + shielding and attacking slow? No.

You get out there, you DW for +15% IAS, you crit and get stacks up on WotHF to get that +15% IAS, and you keep wrecking things by attacking like a whirlwind of strikes, like you should be!