Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.4 Notes - Simplified

     Patch 1.0.4 is live on the Americas realm. Below is a simplified look at the notes, boiling them down to buffs and nerfs for classes. The other areas, such as the Auction House and Battle.net have a few major changes and several minor changes. Consider this the highlights of the patch notes. You can read the full patch notes here.

Auction House
     Major Changes -
          The first thing you'll notice upon opening the new Auction House (referred to as the AH), is that the number of searchable item property fields has been doubled. The initial limit on the fields was a design choice towards the end of development to force players to focus on a few stats instead of trying to find items with 6 perfect stats. In practice, it just made it really hard for players to find items with 6 perfect stats. This is probably the biggest change to the AH that most people will find useful.
          The second major change is the ability to cancel auctions if there are no current bids on the item. This is extremely useful for most players that are trying to clear out their inventory quickly, but are having a tough time with the 10 item auction limit. Now, if they have an item that's been up for a day without bids, they can take it down and re-auction it at a better price. This also shouldn't impact bargain bid snipers, who wait till the last minute to get the best deals. Bidding on the item will lock it out from being canceled, so those bid wars will proceed as planned.
     Minor Changes -
           Several item properties that existed on items but were not searchable, such as Attack Speed on Quivers, are now searchable properties. Reduced Level Requirement items will show up properly in item level searches. Before, you would need to search for level 60 items with a minimum Reduced Level Requirement of 10 or what have you. The compare tooltip is working in several more areas, but there's still no stat comparison underneath. Finally, the listing price of unsold items will appear on the completed page, which should help out all those people that don't create Excel spreadsheets to operate the AH.

Battle.net
     Major Changes -
          None.
     Minor Changes -
          Mousing over a Quick Join game will display all the players in the game in a new window, as well as the amount of open slots. Reporting for Spam will now automatically decline the message. Before, you would have to manually decline the spammer after reporting them.

Bosses
     Maghda : A new interaction. Her insect projectiles can be slowed. They're already slow...
     Ghom : Nerfed. Gas cloud spawn time increased. Less damage to minions. Invulnerable bug fix.
     Cydaea : Minor bug fix.
     Azmodan : A new interaction. The slow moving fireball of death can now be affected by slows.
     Izual : Several bug fixes, especially with his charge ability. It was sometimes not damaging players, or damaging them twice.
     Rakanoth : Bug fix. Fully immune to CC during enrage.
     Diablo : Leaves players in the Shadow Realm, even if they defeat Shadow Diablo, because why wouldn't he/she/it? Just kidding. Only minor cosmetic bug fixes, and an exploit nerf on monks using seven sided strike to avoid Shadow Clone creation.

Classes
     Barbarian -
          Buffs : Damage buffs to
  • Bash
  • Ancient Spear
  • Cleave
  • Hammer of the Ancients
  • Rend, Seismic Slam
  • Weapon Throw
  • Whirlwind
Leap can now be used while CC'd, but won't break the CC. For instance you can Leap while Jailed, but you're still Jailed where you land.
          Nerfs : Proc coefficient nerfs to
  • Hammer of the Ancients
  • Overpower (No longer procs on hit effects)
     Demon Hunter -
          Buffs : Damage buffs to
  • Bola Shot
  • Chakram
  • Cluster Arrow
  • Entangling Shot
  • Evasive Fire
  • Impale
  • Rain of Vengeance
  • Rapid Fire
  • Sentry
  • Smoke Screen (Choking Gas Rune)
  • Strafe
  • Vault (Trail of Cinders Rune)
Cost lowered on Multishot. Brooding healing no longer paused by taking damage.
          Nerfs : Proc coefficient nerfs to
  • Caltrops (no longer triggers on hit effects)
  • Chakram
  • Grenades
     Monk -
          Buffs : Damage buffs to
  • Exploding Palm
  • Lashing Tail Kick
  • Seven-Sided Strike
  • Tempest Rush
  • Wave of Light
Spirit generation increased on Crippling Wave, Way of the Hundred Fists, The Guardian's Path Two-Handed Weapon specialization and Exalted Soul now generates 1 Spirit per second. Cyclone Strike can now trigger on hit effects. Duration of Sweeping Wind Master of Wind Rune doubled to 20 seconds.
          Nerfs : Fixed the exploding palm exploit that allowed Monks to gain multiple rare drops by exploding all mobs in a Champion or Rare pack simultaneously. Mystic Ally can no longer trigger on hit effects.

     Witch Doctor -
          Buffs : Damage buffs to
  • Acid Cloud
  • Corpse Spiders (they now benefit from +Critical Damage)
  • Firebats
  • Firebombs
  • Gargantuan
  • Grasp of the Dead
  • Spirit Barrage
  • Spirit Walk (Umbral Shock and Severance Runes)
  • Soul Harvest (Vengeful Spirit Rune)
  • Wall of Zombies
  • Zombie Charger (Leprous Zombie and Wave of Zombies Runes)
Circle of Life spawn chance increased to 30%. Grave Injustice health and mana gain doubled. Base Mana regeneration increased by 225% to 45 (ha, bet you got all excited about that big number). Spellcasting animations have been tightened. Spirit Vessel form can now walk through monsters and the heal has been increased(incoming exploits?) Tribal Rites affects Zombie Dogs, Gargantuan, and Mass Confusion. Pets should now be much more durable.
          Nerfs : Pet coeffecients drastically reduced (Gargantuan can no longer proc effects). Spirit Vessel duration reduced to 2 seconds.
          ??? : Rush of Essence now returns 49 Mana at Level 60, instead of 30% of the Spirit Spell's cost. Vision Quest redesigned to grant 30% Mana regen instead of 300%, but with a much more forgiving cost. I don't have a level 60 witch doctor to try these out on, so if anyone knows the answer to whether that's a buff or nerf, let me know.
     Wizard -
          Buffs : Damage buffs to
  • Arcane Torrent
  • Archon (Arcane Destruction Rune)
  • Diamond Skin (Diamond Shards and Mirror Skin)
  • Electrocute, Explosive Blast (Time Bomb Runes)
  • Hydra (Arcane, Lightning, Frost, and Mammoth Runes)
  • Ice Armor (Jagged Ice Rune), Meteor, Shock Pulse (Fire Bolts)
  • Teleport (Calamity Rune)

They finally fixed the tooltip on Cold Blooded (which has always affected all damage, but the tooltip said only Cold damage was increased). Ice Armor has an increased chance to freeze targets.
         Nerfs : Proc Coefficient on Energy Twister cut in half. Melee Wizards take note.

Crafting
     Major Changes -
          You can craft new Legendaries compliant with the 1.04 changes!
     Minor Changes - 
          Blacksmith figured out how to repair items.

Items
     Major Changes -
          Pretty much every item you find from here on out is going to be much better than what you would have found in previous patches. Legendary weapons and armor now have unique properties, and can roll for much higher stats than before. Remember that all of these changes are not retro active. Items from pre-1.04 are referred to as "Legacy" on the AH. Make sure you aren't scammed while buying.
     Minor Changes -
          Stack size of Gems is now 100 instead of 30. Repair costs reduced by 25%. Two-Hander stats received a massive buff. Quiver drop rate finally reduced! The hex code trick to let players identify the stats of of an item before identifying the item has been fixed. There's a market for unidentified items that was recently threatened by the mass discovery of this exploit.

Monsters
     Major Changes -
          Drop rate from normal monsters increased by 400% of the previous value. Less bonus bonus health when players co-op. Inferno monster damage and health nerfed across the board. No more enrage timer. No more Invulnerable Minions. Shielding Monsters nerfed. Fire Chains nerfed. Arcane Enchanted nerfed. Nightmarish Monsters can no longer chain fear players. Mortar should no longer land in the dead zone. Oppressor charge will no longer deal damage to players twice (bug).
     Minor Changes –
          Quite a lot of monsters were bugged. Their bug list is extensive. Some monsters were dealing double damage (like the Oppressor charge), while some monsters were spawning in weird areas or without loot.

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