PATCH 1.0.4 preview

[KingOfPain]

PATCH 1.0.4 preview,

Please keep in mind that this list isn't set in stone, but it should provide a useful preview of what we'll be revealing in the days ahead.

System Changes, by Wyatt Cheng
Senior Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng is preparing a high-level summary of some of the system changes planned for 1.0.4.

Legendary Item Improvements, by Andrew Chambers
Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers is working on a blog detailing all the ways we’re making Legendary items stand out.

Magic Find Update, by Jay Wilson
Following up on earlier discussions, Game Director Jay Wilson will be providing an update on how Magic Find is evolving in patch 1.0.4.

Class Changes, by Wyatt Cheng
Wyatt will also be providing a preview of the changes we’ll be making for each class in 1.0.4 (and the philosophy behind those changes).

Patch Notes, by Lylirra
Of course, this is all building up to the actual patch 1.0.4 release, and we’ll be releasing the full patch notes shortly before the update goes live.


We're also planning to run some interviews and developer chats surrounding patch 1.0.4, and we’ll be sharing those on the Diablo III front page. Be on the lookout, as we'd love to get you involved in any live chats we host.

As always, your constructive feedback is very much appreciated. Stay tuned for the updates to follow!

1.0.4 Systems Preview

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

Let's get started!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in-game!

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

Wyatt Cheng is Senior Technical Game Designer on Diablo III, and as a member of Blizzard’s Beef Jerky Club is ordering jalapeno, habenero & ghost chili jerky this month.

[KingOfPain]

....Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall....

This could be significant to make the entire game a little more interesting to play. I've said the insane amount of monsters the game throws at you at once throws off the balance. Increasing normal monster health would help, but not if you are normally all geared up to deal with Champs and Rares... meaning if you are already dealing with Champs and Rares efficiently you are likely overkilling normal monsters by more than the proposed health increase. You will hardly notice the difference. The proper way to do this is to increase normal monster damage. Something like +dmg/X, where x is the number of monsters possible at that location. The other way is to increase monster dmg but slow monsters movement and attack speed. This will make each battle more tactical.


Alas, the whole focus is the endgame, aka Inferno - Wrong Move - Nothing to see here, move along. I am not interested to spend 40 or so boring hours just to get to inferno to do whatever it is they want you to do.

...We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.

As Variants go, it is a good thing. We can create our own challenge level.

"We're removing Enrage timers and the "heal back to full"

Although I don't play SC and haven't done inferno since before 1.03, this gets my thumbs up. How stupid to have introduced it in the first place.

On the topic of two-handers... is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.

A welcome change. Will see if they can do it right.

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

Unless the devs wake up, do 180 and decide to let the players have fun, no amount of item quality upgrade can save this game. Upgrading damage output or Armor bonus, even to the state of god mode, does not make me want to play more. The game is boring because there is nothing to look forward to except more damage and defense. We need FUN items and skills. But that goes against the core design of the game - limit what the players can do to make it seem more challenging.

Stay Classy
"We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we're going to have a separate blog posts for each"
We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each.

Good thing but suffers the same problems with items. Pure damage output equals more choices of boring skills. Let the players have fun. Let the players have more control of the monsters, the battles. Let the skills have real effects, take the fun skills off the timer. Let my wizard teleport to his heart's content

We need FUN items and skills. We don't just need easier ways to kill monsters, We need FUN ways to kill monsters.

[KingOfPain]

One more thing.
As I am playing hardcore, and lately the melee wiz the more I keep thinking how dumb this healing orb system is. How can something so essential to survival be so restricted by the potion design; and subjected to absolute random chance of healing orbs

[Tyrmith]

Well chugging boat loads of pots in D2 seems even more dumb to me. Makes the entire thing dependent on how good your latency and reaction time is to give you infinite health.

That said, I don't understand how they're waiting this long for the pvp patch. That adds a totally massive second dimension to the game I think it's badly missing.

[Injera]

As I am playing hardcore, and lately the melee wiz the more I keep thinking how dumb this healing orb system is. How can something so essential to survival be so restricted by the potion design; and subjected to absolute random chance of healing orbs

They're actually not that random, you can see on the enemies' health bars (for champs and elites, at least) when they're likely or guaranteed to drop one. I've actually had a some exciting moments where I had to make a quick choice between kiting or standing and burning out a health globe. They definitely should be guaranteed instead of random on champs, though.

Let my wizard teleport to his heart's content

It's very doable, just get crit %, arcane power on crit, and slot in Critical Mass and you can. A bit specialized for a non-AH HC character, of course, but it's something to hunt for.

We need FUN items and skills. We don't just need easier ways to kill monsters, We need FUN ways to kill monsters.

Fun items are definitely needed, I'm curious to see what the LI revamp does. I think there are plenty of fun skills that exist but just need a buff, though. For example, Threatening Shout-Grim Harvest is a barb skill that lets you yell at the enemies and frighten them enough they drop gold and items. That's fun! But- the actual gold you get is pretty small, items are really rare, and something like Battle Rage-Marauder's Rage lets you kill things 30% faster. Not an interesting choice. If they give it another benefit, though, it could be great. Runes like this are all over the place, especially on the WD, that simply need to be improved to open up new and fun playstyles. I hope they can pull it off.

That said, I don't understand how they're waiting this long for the pvp patch. That adds a totally massive second dimension to the game I think it's badly missing.

Well, they need to first do the big balance pass on all the skills/runes and then see how those perform out in the wild before they can start up with figuring out PvP balance. So it's a natural order, they've just dragged their feet on this patch to put in the LI improvements, which I don't think they planned on having to do.

From the new changes, I think the increase in magic item drop from trash mobs is going to be really significant. That's a game-changer prior to getting Nephalem Valor, and it encourages a farming style that's a lot more about clearing things. If they can couple it with changes to make chests/barrels worthwhile to click again it will definitely make the game a lot more fun.

[KingOfPain]

Well chugging boat loads of pots in D2 seems even more dumb to me. Makes the entire thing dependent on how good your latency and reaction time is to give you infinite health.

Maybe my memory is clouded by not having played D1 and D2 for a long time, but I don't remember thinking the potion systems was out of whack... Since I remember dying (in softcore, hardcore and ironman), but never once because I was out of potions.

[KingOfPain]

I think there are plenty of fun skills that exist but just need a buff, though.

The mechanics are in the game. All those crazy monster skills we complain about used to be fun player skills in D2. Yea, there's enough fun player skills too if the devs unlock them. The main problem is so much of the difficulty challenge of D3 is based on monster speed, and as extension, monsters controlling player (vs player controlling monsters) they would have to rebalance the whole thing. Of course they have to first realize it's not the easy factor but the fun factor that's missing in the game. For example, if I found my beloved Windforce, I am NOT just looking for a more damaging bow, I expect it to have high % of knockback built in. It's blaspheme otherwise.

To think the devs had to nerve to name something like this Windforce
+11-22 Cold Damage
+26-30% Damage
+75-89 Attack
+25-27 Life After Each Kill
+1 Random Property

Edit: I am NOT just looking

[Injera]

The legendary item revamp dev post is up.

1.0.4 Legendary Item Improvements

[KingOfPain]

The Biggest Bestest news is the admittance how they screwed up on the legendaries, with no excuses. Bravo!

Seems they are on the right path and doing it the right way, actually putting some fun stuff in the items. Too bad they are all end game stuff (shown so far). Not a complaint, just saying there maybe hope for some cool low level stuff yet. Some of the effects don't look to be enough to have real impact but probably is the best they can do under the current balance. All in all, useful fun positive changes.

[Dr.Disaster]

Seems they are on the right path and doing it the right way, actually putting some fun stuff in the items. Too bad they are all end game stuff (shown so far). Not a complaint, just saying there maybe hope for some cool low level stuff yet.

That's so true ..

Let's really hope they hear you. Otherwise me and my chars will never make it past nightmare diff where i stopped playing weeks ago because i'm simply bored by the game. Anyway. 1.0.4 is still work in progress incl. all it's content only 2 weeks ahead it's estimated release so it's back into lurker-mode for me.

There is plenty of other stuff to play, like Legend of Grimrock where i have already more playtime then in my most-played D3 class(!) and a very promising-looking Torchlight 2 is only 2 weeks away.