2.0.1 PTR Is Live

[MonTy]

If you're not lucky enough to be in the Reaper of Souls Closed Beta, the 2.0.1 PTR patch just went live for all owners of Diablo 3.

This massive patch gives you a taste of what to expect with the new Reaper of Souls expansion. Clans & Communities, New Event: Cursed Chests, Itemization Updates (Loot 2.0), Paragon Updates, Class Updates, Crafting Updates, Difficulty Updates, and Monster Updates.

If you need help with setting up and playing in the PTR, read this link.

If you want to check out the current expansion closed beta features, follow this link.

*edit , adventure mode is not in the PTR.

[Athenau]

Been playing a bit. For those who've been following along, the class changes are exactly those in Reaper of Souls, sans the level 61+ skills and passives. Loot is much better (already found two rare upgrades). Monk got a _total_ overhaul. Many, many more options, Fists of Thunder is no longer the best spirit generator (it isn't even the fastest anymore), liking the changes a great deal.

Haven't played the Barb much, but at first glance it seems like Blizzard really shafted him by taking away Into the Fray without buffing his fury generators to compensate. In fact they _nerfed_ his generators, WTF?! I'm afraid that the barb will be garbage if they go to release in this state--hopefully there's a lot more tweaking to come.

Will post a more detailed summary later.

Oh yeah, and big news for melee players, monsters no longer have that gigantic hitbox that makes it impossible to get away once they start swinging. This makes tempting fate possible, but TBH it's more a quality of life change since there's so much going on screen when shit hits the fan that you'll never be able to take advantage of this except accidentally. Still pretty awesome that they removed one of my biggest pet peeves about the combat mechanics.

[MonTy]

After playing on the PTR it's going to be hard going back to vanilla D3. Tons of quality of life improvements that really improve the gameplay. The enemy scaling didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have. Hard Hardcore seemed too easy untwinked, thanks to loot 2.0, so I'll try out the next difficulty and report back. After finishing Act 1 I'm decked out in 5+ rares with high vit & dex stats and two decent legendary items, for my Demon Hunter. But overall I'm finding it to be quite fun compared to the current non-ptr/expansion version.

[Frag]

Thanks for the heads up guys. The latency is pretty horrific, but otherwise it's been fun. I love having a clean stash and huge challenges ahead. As predicted, the first few levels are always the hardest. Taking on a champ pack with 703hpx3 when you're dealing 5 damage a hit is serious business!

[Mavfin]

I'm really enjoying PTR. Love the loot 2.0, including the crafting.

Sell your pages and tomes on Live while you still can!

[Occhidiangela]

Do I really want the expansion?

I just got back to D III after over a year of not touching it.
My son and I are in Hell, just starting. Me witch doctor, he barb. My barb is fun, but a ways back.

What happened? I have real life, and D III as I took one of each class into Nightmare, and got some HC started so i could play a few games with KoP, one day was unable to hold my attention.

Lovely graphics, but ... we'll see if Hell, and then Inferno, diff will capture my attention. If not, I don't think we'll go for the expansion.

[Aahzmadius]

For me, the Diablo games have always been about fun multi-player gaming. If you can get a good team together, I think you'll enjoy the expansion experience. Apparently Blizzard has done a good job of providing more build and gear diversity, as well as removing a lot of the spiky damage that makes D3 frustrating at times. But as a solo game, D3 falls short of many others. If not for the multi-player aspect, I would have returned to Skyrim instead of pouring 1,000+ hours (and counting!) into D3.

But yeah, I've pre-ordered the expansion.

[Mavfin]

Do I really want the expansion?

I just got back to D III after over a year of not touching it.
My son and I are in Hell, just starting. Me witch doctor, he barb. My barb is fun, but a ways back.

What happened? I have real life, and D III as I took one of each class into Nightmare, and got some HC started so i could play a few games with KoP, one day was unable to hold my attention.

Lovely graphics, but ... we'll see if Hell, and then Inferno, diff will capture my attention. If not, I don't think we'll go for the expansion.

My advice is for you to check out the PTR, or, check D3 after the 2.0 patch changes the loot and difficulty setups. It's a huge improvement over current Live D3.

[Athenau]

Leveled a hardcore wiz to 60 on the PTR (expert difficulty). What they did with this class is amazing.

Every spender is viable now (except maybe for energy twister, what a turd that skill is). Synergies abound. Passives are all useful and unique. The wizard is a theorycrafter's dream.

Will definitely be playing the shit out of wizard on live/RoS.

[Chesspiece_face]

Every spender is viable now (except maybe for energy twister, what a turd that skill is). Synergies abound. Passives are all useful and unique. The wizard is a theorycrafter's dream.

Energy Twister + Meteor + Ess of Johan will be a thing I bet.

[TheDragoon]

Amongst the talk of the PTR, I thought I'd mention my experience on the live game. I booted up D3 for the first time in a long, long time, over the past weekend, and was very pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the frustration I had back on the initial release seems to have lapsed. I was able to take my monk (easily the character I had the most experience with and the best set of gear) and start clearing out Inferno difficulty. That would have been simply impossible back when I stopped playing the game, so I was happy to see that at least the game is PLAYABLE at that difficulty, now! I think I'll have to read up more about the PTR at some point to see what all of the awesome new things are, but at least for now I was happy to see I could make some progress, again! :-)

[Aahzmadius]

Patch 2.01 will soon* be on the live servers. New loot, re-worked skills, account-wide paragon levels are among the new changes.

Happy hunting!

*Soon in this case means within the next few hours.

[Frag]

They're now saying approximately 3 p.m. PST. Don't hold your breath. That's like 4 1/2 hours away, you'd pass out.


Edit: Now saying 8 p.m. PST. Ahh, "soon™" I've missed you.

[Occhidiangela]

Hmm, I just logged into D III, and I have to have my game "optimized" by the patch files.
Will take an hour.

Woot?

[Frag]

I'm in, I'm streaming, it's fun.

[Occhidiangela]

OK, what just happened?

No longer in Hell Diff. My sorcie was in Hell Diff, Act III.

Should I choose Expert or Hard? .. or normal?


OK, I am lost. Will take a look again in a few days.
It reloaded my PC, and I had to reconfigure the visual settings, which had gone all fuzzy.

Talk later. Not sure what I am going to do.

[Frag]

There is no more difficulty. Mobs scale to your level. Normal is fine, each higher level just increases things more or less like MP did before.

[Mavfin]

OK, what just happened?

No longer in Hell Diff. My sorcie was in Hell Diff, Act III.

Should I choose Expert or Hard? .. or normal?


OK, I am lost. Will take a look again in a few days.
It reloaded my PC, and I had to reconfigure the visual settings, which had gone all fuzzy.

Talk later. Not sure what I am going to do.

Ok, the old way, monster level was determined by difficulty and location; i.e. You were in Hell difficulty, Act III, mobs were right up around that 60 level, regardless of your level.

The new way, the monsters are always your level, no matter where you are, from outside the gates of Tristram, all the way to Diablo, and into Act V when the time comes.

Difficulty is now more or less actually that. Higher difficulties get higher +gold and +xp, and from what I can see higher diffs get more elite packs of all kinds. Of course, all mobs have more health on higher difficulties, and hit harder. The key to this is that Normal through Master drop the same loot. A 60 in Normal can now get what was Inferno loot before. So, you pick your difficulty, not the loot level.

Then there's Torment, with a slider from I to VI. There are Torment-only Legendaries, but, again, I think what drops on Torment VI can also drop on Torment I. Not completely sure on that.

The upshot of this is that you're no longer confined to 'most efficient DPS build that can survive in Inferno'. You can run in Normal, still get good drops, and have off-key 'fun' builds. Or go to Torment VI, and get forced into cookie-cutters to stay alive. Your choice, or anything in between.

This is my understanding and feel for the 'new' difficulty scheme in D3 after quite a bit of time in PTR, and playing some last night on live.

Normal through Expert are available immediately, Master when you complete Act IV on any difficulty, and Torment when/if you have a 60.

The other nice thing about this: When I did a 1-60 on Expert difficulty on the PTR, I was within a quarter-level of 60 after killing Diablo, so you no longer have to do 3 or 4 passes to make it to 60.

My advice to Occhi is to pick a difficulty, see how it feels to your sorcie, and go on from there. From what I can tell, glass cannons no longer work very well at higher difficulties, so just try Expert, and see if it's fun. If not, adjust difficulty accordingly.

I'll stop rambling, and go play from here.

[Aahzmadius]

If you've been away from D3 for awhile and want a quick summary of the changes patch 2.01 introduced, here's a good way to spend 10 minutes:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comment...-back-hell

[Occhidiangela]

Based on the damage I do at the moment, with this girls first ever legendary dropping this afternoon, I'll stay on Hard until I get a better feel/comfort with the new things that have happened. I tend to walk around with a little glowing ball surrounding me, due to a passive, but I probably need to respec.

Thanks for the link.