1.0.3 Coming Changes

[Quark]

Stolen from my Reader feed thanks to websense ...

Legendaries

Drop rates have changed in 1.0.3 The highest ilvl can drop in act 1 inferno but at a lower rate than act 3 and 4. You can view the table in the post to see all the percents.
We won't be seeing the Legendaries stats change this patch however when they are done high level Legendaries should be flat out better than blue items.

Nephalem Valor

With 5 stacks of NV bosses will now only drop 1 "guaranteed" rare instead of 2. (They will still have a high chance to drop more just like before, just one less "guaranteed" one.
Elite packs will now drop a bonus guaranteed rare when you have full stacks of NV

Group Play

Monsters will not longer have bonus damage per additional player in coop games.

Inferno Balancing

Act 1 feels just how they want it.
Getting to Act 2 is to large of a step, if a barb and monk can clear Act 1 with an offensive build and murder everything, they should be able to switch to a defensive build and do okay in Act 2
Act 2,3 and 4 will have have monster health and damage adjusted to make them fit smoothly.

Deaths and Repair Costs

Repair costs at 60 are almost not noticable, and due to this they see a lot of people simply "graveyard zerging" enemies.
They had a few ideas on how to discourage this, ultimately they will be increases repair costs between x4 and x6 their current values.

Attack Speed

Attack speed modifier will now properly work on all items.
Players currently feel that Attack Speed is one of the "required" stats, and blizzard does not want this. They have two ideas to fix this and are looking for feedback on them. They are currently leaning toward the first idea.
Reduced how much attack speed can be found on an item
add a hidden modifier that basically adds diminishing returns on attack speed.

Gems

As stated before, both the Blacksmith and the Jeweler will become a little cheaper.
There is a table in the post below showing you the new cost for crafting the first 8 tiers of gems. (They only require two of each gem type now, along with reduced gold cost)

Class Balancing

Patch 1.0.3 will not be focused on class balancing. (there will be a small number of skill changes)
Patch 1.1 will be the patch for most class tweaks which will have focus on punching build diversity up a few more notches

Sauce:
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/48474-pa...3-preview/

All looks to be pretty strong changes. More reason to roll the NV buff for awhile, less of a jump between 1->2 in Inferno, and doesn't kill melee just by being in coop. Kind of glad my IAS set didn't really get started, though. Guess I'll stick with the slow 2H even longer now (seriously, is Wizard just the opposite of everything else? Signature spells are just too weak).