Diablo 3 Blog Guide

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!

Here is a small guide on how to replace your IAS gear submitted by PL.

The days before the patch I saw it coming and replaced a lot of gear with crit/crit dmg instead of IAS except for my gloves which are insane.

I replaced my rings, ammy, etc with these guidelines.

Guidelines:

I found that for me(may differ slightly for you):

1% ias = ~1% crit = ~8 Dex = ~7% crit damage

When I replace gear though  I  rounded the dex up to 10 dex to ensure it would be an adequate replacement. So the guideline  I  used was:

1% ias = ~1% crit = 10 Dex = 7.5% crit dmg

Using this I lost no damage and actually gained damage on most pieces so  I  figured  I  would share it for those looking to replace IAS gear.


For clarification these are a general guideline that worked for me to replace nerfed IAS items, experiment and find how these numbers need to be altered some as needed to fit your build, especially when it comes to crit and crit dmg as when i came around to these figured I was sitting at 24% crit with 100% crit dmg using a 2hand crossbow with archery passive on.

Here are the patch notes for 1.0.3. (Deployed June 19, 2012.)

• General
• Battle.net
• Classes
• Items
• Crafting
• Followers
• Bosses
• Monsters
• Bug Fixes
   

• To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Willow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.
• The real-money auction house is now available for Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian currencies

• General
  • Friends will now sort alphabetically by name within the Friends List, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
  • The Quick Join menu will now also sort alphabetically by name, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
  • Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out
  • Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session
• Bug Fixes
  • Using the /who command in a heavily populated chat channel should no longer cause the client to crash
  • The "Invite to Party" button should no longer become grayed-out if a player:
    • Declines a party invite
    • Requests a party invite and then declines it
    • Accepts a party invite, but immediately then leaves the party
  • The character screen should now always display the display the correct act and quest information
  • If Real ID has been disabled for a Battle.net account, attempting to add a Real ID friend in Diablo III will now prompt the player with the following error message: "Battle.net is unable to add friends because you have Real ID disabled."

• Barbarian
  • Active Skills
    • Ignore Pain
      • Skill Rune – Contempt for Weakness
        • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
    • Overpower
      • Skill Rune – Crushing Advance
        • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
        • The tooltip has been updated to represent that both melee and ranged damage are reflected
    • Weapon Throw
      • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be slowed: "Hurl a throwing weapon at any enemy for 100% weapon damage and Slow the movement of the enemy by 60% for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
  • Passive Skills
    • Relentless
      • Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75%, down from 100% (the 50% damage reduction remains unchanged)
• Demon Hunter
  • Active Skills
    • Cluster Arrow
      • Skill Rune - Dazzling Arrow
        • Tooltip now displays the correct type of weapon damage dealt by Dazzling Arrow: "Enemies hit by grenades have a 55% chance to be stunned for 2 seconds and changes the damage to Physical." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
    • Grenades
      • Skill Rune - Stun Grenades
        • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Hurl grenades that have a 25% chance to Stun enemies for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
  • Bug Fixes
    • Caltrops
      • Skill Rune – Jagged Spikes
        • Effect will now only stack up to 10 times on a single target
    • Elemental Arrow
      • Skill Rune – Nether Tentacles
        • Tentacles will now only hit each target once
• Monk
  • General
    • Monks can now use spears, two-handed weapons, and two-handed swords
  • Active Skills
    • Serenity
      • Skill Rune – Instant Karma
        • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
    • Seven-Sided Strike
      • Skill Rune - Sustained Attack
        • Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Reduces the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike to 23 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
    • Mantra of Retribution
      • Damage will now cap based on the maximum Life of the target
  • Bug Fixes
    • Near Death Experience
      • Fatal damage absorbed by Serenity will no longer trigger Near Death Experience
• Witch Doctor
  • Active Skills
    • Summon Zombie Dogs
      • Skill Rune – Leeching Beasts
        • Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Your Zombie Dogs heal 50% of the damage they deal as Life divided evenly between themselves and you." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
• Wizard
  • Active Skills
    • Diamond Skill
      • Skill Rune – Mirror Skin
        • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the amount of damage absorbed by Diamond Skin
    • Magic Weapon
      • When activated, a buff icon will now appear that displays the amount of time remaining
    • Meteor
      • Skill Rune - Star Pact
        • Now deals damage as Arcane instead of Fire
    • Passive Skills
      • Paralysis
        • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Lightning damage dealt to enemies has up to a 8% chance to Stun the target for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

• General
  • + Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50%
    • This change does not apply to quivers
  • High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty
    • The new approximate drop rates are as follows:
      • Hell - Act III and Act IV
        • iLvl 61: 9%
        • iLvl 62: 1.9%
        • iLvl 63: 0%
      • Inferno - Act I
        • iLvl 61: 17.7%
        • iLvl 62: 7.9%
        • iLvl 63: 2.0%
      • Inferno - Act II
        • iLvl 61: 18.6%
        • iLvl 62: 12.4%
        • iLvl 63: 4.1%
      • Inferno - Act III and Act IV
        • iLvl 61: 24.1%
        • iLvl 62: 16.1%
        • iLvl 63: 8.0%
    • Please see the Patch 1.0.3 Design Preview for more information and specific details
  • Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63
  • Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses
  • The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color)
  • The Staff of Herding can no longer be salvaged or dropped
  • Crafted items that are dropped on the ground due to a player’s inventory being full can no longer be seen or picked up by other players
  • Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain
  • Weapon racks will no longer drop weapons 100% of the time
  • Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed
• Weapons and Armor
  • "Balanced" superior items (i.e. Balanced Short Sword) will now grant a percent attack speed increase that only affects the weapon itself, rather than a flat increase to attacks per second that affected both equipped weapons when dual-wielding
  • Crowd Control Reduction from items and skills will now reduce the percentage value of Slow, Chill, and Attack Speed debuffs rather than reducing how long the debuff lasts
    • For example: previously, if you were debuffed by a 60% slow that lasted for 2 seconds while wearing gear that provides 20% Crowd Control Reduction, your movement speed would be reduced by 60%, but only for 1.6 seconds. Now, the same amount of Crowd Control Reduction will reduce the Slow effect to 48%, but the effect will remain for the full 2 second duration.
  • Manticore now has one additional bonus affix
• User Interface
  • Minimum damage and Maximum damage values will now display separately in an item's tooltip (i.e. "+2-4 Damage" will now display as "+2 Minimum Damage” and “+2 Maximum Damage")
  • Tooltips for items on the ground will now show comparison stats
  • Resist values will now be taken into effect when calculating the Protection comparison stat (the Protection value is an average protection estimate of all your resists)
  • When comparing a two-handed weapon against two currently-equipped one-handed weapons, the game will now simulate the removal of both one-handed weapons (instead of simply removing the main-hand weapon, which resulted in an inaccurate comparison)
  • When selling items to a vendor, the most recently sold items will now always display at the bottom of the Buyback tab
• Bug Fixes
  • Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip
  • Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix
  • Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed
    • Please note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in future patch.
  • Players wearing +Life on Kill items should no longer receive a benefit from this affix when "killing" friendly monsters (e.g. when a witch doctor re-summons a Spider Queen while another Spider Queen is still active)
  • Fixed a bug with linking items with socketed gems in chat
  • Fixed a bug where vendors would occasionally not have any items for sale
  • Fixed a bug where selling more than 12 items to a vendor and then buying back 1 of those items could cause multiple items to disappear from the Buyback tab
  • Fixed a bug where swapping a 1-slot item (i.e. a ring) with 2-slot item (i.e. a weapon) in the second or third tab of a player’s stash would sometimes cause the 2-slot item to be filtered incorrectly to the first tab
  • Fixed a bug that was causing Collector's Edition dyes to sell for the same price regardless of stack size

• General
  • The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50% to 75%
• Blacksmith
  • The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%
  • The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced
    • Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5
    • Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5
  • The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced
  • Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft
  • The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced
  • Weapon crafting costs have been reduced
  • The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced
• Jeweler
  • The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced
    • Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3
      • The gold cost to combine each rank of gems is now as follows:
        • Rank 2 - Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)
        • Rank 3 - Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)
        • Rank 4 - Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)
        • Rank 5 - Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)
        • Rank 6 - Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)
        • Rank 7 - Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)
        • Rank 8 - Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)

• General
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed a bug where the maximum Life of your followers was being displayed as different values in different parts of the game UI
• Enchantress
  • Skills
    • Mass Control
      • Radius reduced from 15 yards to 8 yards
      • If Enchantress also has Reflect Missiles trained, Mass Control will no longer accidentally hex the player when both skills are activated
      • Skill will now correctly target enemies in all circumstances

• General
  • Bosses have had their pathing improved
  • The quality of the item for the fourth stack of Nephalem Valor from bosses has been slightly reduced
• Skeleton King
  • Abilities
    • Will now summon Skeletal Archers in Hell and Inferno difficulties
• The Warden (mini-boss)
  • General
    • Now has Fast and Molten affixes, in addition to Jailer
    • In Inferno difficulty, the Warden will also gain the Desecrator affix
• Butcher
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed an issue where the corner panel fires in the Chamber of Suffering were doing twice as much damage as intended
• Ghom
  • Abilities
    • Gas Cloud
      • Radius of Gas Cloud has been slightly reduced
      • Slowing effect has been removed
      • The amount of damage dealt by Gas Cloud when first entering the cloud has been reduced, but the amount of damage incurred for remaining in the cloud has been increased
      • In Inferno difficulty, Gas Clouds will last longer, spawn 2 at a time, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more quickly
• Maghda
  • Bug Fixes
    • Punish Dust projectiles can no longer be reflected
• Zoltun Kulle
  • General
    • Zoltun Kulle will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes, using his Ceiling Collapse ability more often and for much higher damage
  • Abilities
    • Ceiling Collapse
      • Can now be cast at a player from any range
    • Fireball
      • Fireball attack now moves slower
      • Can now be cast at a player from any range
    • Teleport
      • Will now Teleport and run away from the player less often
      • Will now occasionally Teleport to the player
• Belial
  • General
    • Belial will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes in his final phase, increasing the number of green pools dropped across the entire encounter platform
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed a bug that was causing Belial to use his breath attack away from the player rather than towards the player under certain circumstances
• Siegebreaker
  • General
    • Overall damage has been reduced
    • No longer vulnerable to Confuse and Charm effects
    • Will now drop a health globe every 25% health mark (i.e. at 75%, 50%, and 25% health)
    • Now enrages after 4 minutes
    • In Inferno difficulty, Siegebreaker will now gain the Reflects Damage affix
• Cydaea
  • Abilities
    • Spiderlings
      • Spiderlings will now have an easier time hitting players, but their damage has been reduced by 20% to compensate
      • In Inferno difficulty, Spiderlings will now live longer, be more spread out, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more often
• Rakanoth
  • General
    • In Inferno difficulty, Rakanoth will now become much more aggressive after 3 minutes
• Izual
  • General
    • Health pool has been increased
    • The number of Oppressors that join the fight has been reduced from 4 to 2
    • Will no longer target Followers or Tyrael as frequently
  • Abilities
    • Base Attacks
      • Base attack damage has been lowered
      • No longer does Cold damage on top of base attacks
    • Charge
      • Charge damage has been reduced
      • Knockback has been removed
      • Will Charge slightly more often, but will only target players
    • Frozen Bombs
      • Frozen Bomb damage has been reduced
      • Bombs will now explode faster
      • Only 8 Bombs will now spawn around the player rather than 12
      • Bombs will spawn at Izual's feet less often
    • Frost Explosion
      • Frost Explosion damage has been reduced by 70%
      • Duration of freeze has been increased
      • Damage dealt to players while frozen will now break the effect
      • Players can now use defensive cooldown while frozen
      • Players can no longer avoid being frozen by doing high amounts of amount to Izual
  • Bug Fixes
    • Izual will no longer spawn twice if a player skips his introductory cut-scene
• Diablo
  • Bug Fixes
    • Damage Over Time (DoT) effects will now be properly cancelled when Diablo becomes invisible and casts Shadow Clones in Phase Two
    • Diablo "Stomp" ability is now correctly classified as a debuff instead of a buff
    • Fixed a bug that was causing pets to not attack Shadow Clones

• General
  • Champions, Rares, and Uniques have had their pathing improved
  • Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
  • Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced
  • Colossal Golgor base damage has been reduced
  • Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced
  • Soul Ripper and Soul Lasher damage has been reduced and both monsters will now run away less often
  • Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less
  • Succubus monsters will now run away less and for a shorter distance
  • The health pools of Woodwraiths in the Highlands now match the health pools of Woodwraiths in the Fields of Misery
  • Lacuni and Scavenger Rares and and Champions will now un-burrow when called by their allies
  • Bloodclan Warriors no longer knockback when buffed and attack slightly slower
  • Morlu no longer have the Invulnerable Minions, Health Link, or Fire Chains affixes
  • Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified monsters no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, and Lightning damage (respectively)
  • Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced
  • Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%
• Bug Fixes
  • Interrupting a monster attack before it lands will now properly trigger its cooldown
  • Treasure Goblins will now drop gold piles for all nearby players
  • Lacuni Warrior Rares and Champions will now reset their enrage timer correctly in Inferno difficulty
  • The Succubus "Blood Star" debuff will no longer affect the player if the damage from the projectile is dodged/blocked/etc
  • The damage from the Succubus “Blood Star” debuff will now scale based on the current cost of a player's skill, even if the cost is reduced by items or skill runes
  • Monsters with the Extra Health affix should no longer gain more health every time players leave and join the game
  • Monsters with the Reflects Damage affix will no longer reflect Follower damage back to the player
  • Monsters with the Health Link and Knockback affixes will no longer knockback friendly monsters
  • Fixed a bug that was causing Champion Wallers to occasionally create walls at their location rather than the player's location
  • Fixed a bug where Sandwasp projectiles could sometimes become invisible

• General
  • The experience bar for characters at level cap on a Guest Pass account will now display 0/0 experience. If the account holder upgrades to the full game, their characters will be at 0/41000 experience towards the next level.
  • The speed of the animation that plays when resurrecting another players should no longer scale with your attack speed
  • Attempting to cast a skill while spamming the Town Portal hot key will now correctly interrupt the Town Portal cast and animation
  • Players who use Town Portal while in a tar pit will no longer keep the tar pit debuff after being teleported
  • It is no longer possible for players in Hell difficulty to skip to Inferno difficulty by creating and leaving Public Games
  • It is no longer possible to prevent character death in a single-player game by pausing the game in one game client and then logging into the same account from a different game client
  • Fixed a bug where The Lyceum in the Southern Highlands was not appearing
  • Fixed a bug where players could switch their offerings in the Trade window right before clicking "Accept" and, due to high latency, the game would not always be able to verify that both players were accepting the same offerings
  • Fixed a bug that was allowing players to temporarily pick up items that belonged to another account
  • Fixed a bug that was causing players to become stuck when using a banner to port to another player that was in an "un-walkable" location (i.e. to a barbarian in the middle of performing Leap)
  • Fixed a position desync bug (aka "rubberbanding") that could happen when some movement skills (Strafe, Whirlwind, Tempest Rush) ended because the player ran out of the appropriate resource
  • Fixed several issues where a player's character would get stuck or "rubberband" while moving if their movement speed was slowed in any way
  • Several performance improvements have been made to both the PC and Mac client
• Auction House
  • Item tooltips in the auction house will now correctly reflect stat bonuses provided by socketed gems
  • Items with class-specific affixes should now display the class restriction properly
  • It should no longer be possible for players to purchase a stack of items so large that it cannot be sent to their stash
  • The data displayed in each auction house tab should now properly reset when logging out