Patching 1.0.2c -- potentially nerfed mob damage

[ViralSpiral]

Does a Familiar benefit from Temporal Flux? Familiar with Cannoneer might be fun, if so. Or even Ancient Guardian...good kiting and that hit absorption could be a life-saver. Or maybe Arcane Torrent with Disruption to get all your damage modes up (I'm getting that Disintegrate suffers from Inferno-targeting, but it seems everyone and their mum uses Arcane Orb, so I'm trying to get something else in that slot.)

[Chesspiece_face]

Does a Familiar benefit from Temporal Flux? Familiar with Cannoneer might be fun, if so. Or even Ancient Guardian...good kiting and that hit absorption could be a life-saver. Or maybe Arcane Torrent with Disruption to get all your damage modes up (I'm getting that Disintegrate suffers from Inferno-targeting, but it seems everyone and their mum uses Arcane Orb, so I'm trying to get something else in that slot.)

I'm unsure of the interaction between Familiar and Temporal Flux. Ancient Guardian is actually a very strong skill and were I to use Familiar I would probably take that as the rune. The problem is as an offensive passive Magic Weapon is hands down better, and as a defensive option Energy Armor with Force/Prismatic is hands down better. With the present balance of the end game you don't have the luxury of playing a jack-of-all-trades build. You either need to maximize as much defense as possible while building up your damage or you need to forgo defense altogether and stack so much damage that you have a chance to kill stuff before it ever has a chance to hit you. Overall the more sensible route is to focus on your defenses but it still means you need to get every ounce of efficiency out of both your items and your skills so sacrificing a skill slot that only half fills any need isn't generally a worth while investment.

[ViralSpiral]

See, that's why I was asking, because I figured that Familiar could fill the Secondary slot in Elective Mode. At least assuming if Flux interacts with it (I have the same question of if it works with the rune for Mirror Image that lets the images do 10% damage), because if you spread out even more snare that way, it just might be worth it. The familiar would be (per attack) lower damage than any of the Secondaries, but I think it has potentially much stronger rune options.

If Familiar or the rune option for Mirror Image actually work with Temporal Flux, it may be a viable option. If not, I wonder whether or not they were intended to and might be bugged (or they make work with Flux and that might be a bug.) The build only synergises because of Flux working to snare on all attacks. If there's something it doesn't work with, you're better off using cold to chill or switching to an Arcane option it -does- work with.

[Trevan]

I've been doing this. Do you want to know how much I've spent on the Gold AH doing this, before the RMAH came out? Well over 2 million gold, and probably more than 3 million. I still can barely set foot in Act II. In order to buy any sort of upgrade I'm looking at 1 million plus per item, and I guarantee I'll need at least 3 new pieces to get anywhere in Act II (let alone all the way to Belial, which seems an almost impossible task at this point). The requirements scale up so ridiculously fast you'll get whiplash trying to follow them. Also, pardon me but spending 20 hours a week farming for gold is not my cup of tea, especially considering how I'll just have to double that to get any further the next time.

This statement confuses me. I have spent 60k max per armor piece, and maybe 100k per weapon max. I even dual wield 1 hand xbow, which is widely believed to be underpowered but I find it fun anyways. And i'm almost at Belial in Act 2 Inferno. You use a DH from what i've read, right? What skills are you using?

For what it's worth, i'm using this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/de...aeY!bZccZZ

[Chesspiece_face]

See, that's why I was asking, because I figured that Familiar could fill the Secondary slot in Elective Mode. At least assuming if Flux interacts with it (I have the same question of if it works with the rune for Mirror Image that lets the images do 10% damage), because if you spread out even more snare that way, it just might be worth it. The familiar would be (per attack) lower damage than any of the Secondaries, but I think it has potentially much stronger rune options.

If Familiar or the rune option for Mirror Image actually work with Temporal Flux, it may be a viable option. If not, I wonder whether or not they were intended to and might be bugged (or they make work with Flux and that might be a bug.) The build only synergises because of Flux working to snare on all attacks. If there's something it doesn't work with, you're better off using cold to chill or switching to an Arcane option it -does- work with.

The problem here lies within the mechanics of Familiar itself. Familiar will only fire off a shot if you actively use an ability on an enemy. I will need to check again, but my rememberance is that the Familiar buff is not transferred over to your Mirror Images (by all means, correct me if I am wrong.) What that means is that the only time you would benefit from Familiar actually slowing something is when you have already hit it with an ability. Most of the time with a Temporal Flux build that ability would itself transmit the snare, thus having Familiar also synergize with Temporal Flux is trivial.

The only real way to make Familiar a viable choice in any build other than all out DPS damn everything else, will be after 1.03 when it may actually be possible to benifit from a mixed Offense/Defense skill.

[Elric of Grans]

This statement confuses me. I have spent 60k max per armor piece, and maybe 100k per weapon max. I even dual wield 1 hand xbow, which is widely believed to be underpowered but I find it fun anyways. And i'm almost at Belial in Act 2 Inferno. You use a DH from what i've read, right? What skills are you using?

For what it's worth, i'm using this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/de...aeY!bZccZZ

Roland has probably the only Demon Hunter in Inferno that does not use Smoke Screen at all, let alone the standard SS/Prep combo. That one skill changes the entire game for Demon Hunters in ways that no skill should.

[Trevan]

This statement confuses me. I have spent 60k max per armor piece, and maybe 100k per weapon max. I even dual wield 1 hand xbow, which is widely believed to be underpowered but I find it fun anyways. And i'm almost at Belial in Act 2 Inferno. You use a DH from what i've read, right? What skills are you using?

For what it's worth, i'm using this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/de...aeY!bZccZZ

Roland has probably the only Demon Hunter in Inferno that does not use Smoke Screen at all, let alone the standard SS/Prep combo. That one skill changes the entire game for Demon Hunters in ways that no skill should.

That does explain it. Personally i'd prefer not to use it. I only really carry it for root breaks. Jailer champion packs would be literally impossible for me without it. Jail is literally undodgeable, unlike freeze, so I have no idea how I'd fight 4xjails.

Also I was resistant to prep all the way till act 2 inferno. Those invisible snakes forced me to use it, because they were invulnerable to knockback from Rain of Vengeance Stampede.

[MongoJerry]

As for Wizard builds, I used Disintigrate with the wide beam rune up until midway through act 1 Inferno. It was a fun skill, synergized well with Arcane Hydra/Temporal Flux, and put out lots of damage. After moving further into Inferno I had to drop it for Arcane Orb. Any skill that forces you to stand still to get the greatest benefit becomes too much of a liability in my estimation.

Disintegrate vs Arcane Orb is certainly a matter of choice and preference. However, I disagree with the "stand still" reasoning. You have to stand still to cast Arcane Orb as well. You might feel that you can cast it on the run, but for its cast time, you have to stand still -- just as long as you have to stand still for Disintegrate to tick.

[Lissa]

This statement confuses me. I have spent 60k max per armor piece, and maybe 100k per weapon max. I even dual wield 1 hand xbow, which is widely believed to be underpowered but I find it fun anyways. And i'm almost at Belial in Act 2 Inferno. You use a DH from what i've read, right? What skills are you using?

For what it's worth, i'm using this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/de...aeY!bZccZZ

Roland has probably the only Demon Hunter in Inferno that does not use Smoke Screen at all, let alone the standard SS/Prep combo. That one skill changes the entire game for Demon Hunters in ways that no skill should.

Roland isn't the only DH that doesn't use SS/Prep. After getting my hands on a few items and getting a good XBow, I now turn out almost 23k DPS and use the following build. It works for me and I can pretty much blitz most things in Act 1 Inferno (sometimes things get harry or I mess up and die). Now, Act 2, even with the gear I have that make Act 1 a relative walk I still get steam rolled by champ/boss packs in early parts of Act 2 Inferno.

And Mongo, if you had been into Inferno in any serious amount, you would realize that Blizzard's QA is sorely lacking. The information is all around you on these forums, but you refuse to realize it. It goes beyond the difficulty of Inferno and the stupidity of how they decided to do it so arbitrarily, it also goes to viability of some skills and why others are way too powerful along with how some of the cheese/exploits got through. Face it, Blizzard's QA needs some pretty hefty work.

[Chesspiece_face]

Disintegrate vs Arcane Orb is certainly a matter of choice and preference. However, I disagree with the "stand still" reasoning. You have to stand still to cast Arcane Orb as well. You might feel that you can cast it on the run, but for its cast time, you have to stand still -- just as long as you have to stand still for Disintegrate to tick.

I would argue that the key words in my statement are "greatest benefit". Yes Arcane Orb does force you to stop for a second to cast it, as does Disintigrate. But during that split second you need to stop with Arcane Orb you get a skill that has 175% base weapon damage vs. 155% for Disintigrate. You also get a skill that has a wide area of effect going out which if you are in a serious hurry (which you often are) helps when your targeting might not be dead on. Chances are you will still hit something back there. To get the maximum benefit out of Disintigrate you need to stand and channel it for a time.

[MongoJerry]

And Mongo, if you had been into Inferno in any serious amount, you would realize that Blizzard's QA is sorely lacking. The information is all around you on these forums, but you refuse to realize it. It goes beyond the difficulty of Inferno and the stupidity of how they decided to do it so arbitrarily, it also goes to viability of some skills and why others are way too powerful along with how some of the cheese/exploits got through. Face it, Blizzard's QA needs some pretty hefty work.

I believe your statement was that "Blizzard's QA has been steadily going down hill for years." That means that you believe that Blizzard's QA was much better in the past. My comment was to demonstrate that, no, in fact, Blizzard's QA was quite crummy in the past. Perhaps nostalgia is clouding your mind to just how buggy and broken D2 and especially LOD was at the time of their releases. Compared to those fiascos, the problems with D3, which do exist, are minor and more easily fixable in comparison. All they have to do is make it easier for people to get better gear and tune down the health and damage on the mobs in Inferno a bit. That's it. The skills that you claim to be "broken" in Inferno are not in fact broken. They don't suddenly change their effect in Inferno versus hell, right? (Well, perhaps Barbarian stuns shouldn't have their effect reduced so much in Inferno). The reason why some skills seem suddenly "broken" in Inferno is because of the massive health and spike damage that gets dealt in Inferno. Allow better gear to drop and tune down the mob health and damage in Inferno, and poof all those skills suddenly come back into play again just like they were in hell difficulty. Guess what Blizzard is going to do in 1.0.3? Allow better gear to drop and tone down Inferno mob health and damage. We'll see when the patch is released whether the changes are enough.

This is opposed to D2 and LOD, where patches had to rewrite the game code and fundamentally alter the skill systems in order to finally make a game that had at least some semblence of balance and playability. How long did it take between the release of D2 and the 1.10 LOD patch? Three years? And even after that, they had to continue patching to remove some gross problems. This isn't even to mention all of the duping problems that plagued the game throughout its tenure. Compared to all of the problems D2 and LOD had, the problems that D3 has are trivial.

[Elric of Grans]

There are huge skill discrepancies across the classes, however, which are to be rebalanced in 1.1.0. There are many skills that are either underwhelming compared to other options (eg Vault vs Smoke Screen), not as effective as they perhaps should be (eg Witch Doctor pets), and skills that boggle the mind completely (eg Arcane Torrent). Not to mention how certain game mechanics force players to use certain skills (eg Jailer). The fixes coming in 1.0.3 will address many of the fundamental issues with Inferno, but you will find they have very little impact on the overall balance of skills.

That said, Blizzard has the best track record in the industry for patching games. I just wish they would be a little more open with information, as it would surely solve the PR debacle they are currently going through.

[MongoJerry]

There are huge skill discrepancies across the classes, however, which are to be rebalanced in 1.1.0. There are many skills that are either underwhelming compared to other options (eg Vault vs Smoke Screen), not as effective as they perhaps should be (eg Witch Doctor pets), and skills that boggle the mind completely (eg Arcane Torrent). Not to mention how certain game mechanics force players to use certain skills (eg Jailer). The fixes coming in 1.0.3 will address many of the fundamental issues with Inferno, but you will find they have very little impact on the overall balance of skills.

Sure, there are some skills that need some significant buffing or alterations like Arcane Torrent and Energy Twister. Other skills could use some minor tweaking like Meteor/Comet should have its AP cost reduced and Diamond Skin and Galvanizing Ward should have their effects based on the players' maximum health in order to make them scale better in the end game. However, considering the number of arguments I see on Wizard boards about what the "best build" is and what the best passives are, I think Blizzard should be commended for creating classes that allow for a number of paths to success even as I hope that Blizzard continues to improve and balance some of the less used skills.

Regarding certain game mechanics that "force" players to use certain skills, I've seen lots of arguments on Wizard boards about whether the best counter to Jailer is Teleport, Mirror Images, or Diamond Skin with various rune combinations (and Frost Nova isn't bad, either). So, there are quite a variety of Wizard defensive skill combinations that are being utilized. I think your comment may reflect your experience with the Demon Hunter, and in that I will have to take your word that there is only one viable counter available to the class. In that case, then yes, I hope that Blizzard adds some more defensive capabilities to the DH in order to add the kind of variety that is already available to the Wizard class.

I think some people here try to pigeon hole me into saying that the game is perfect. It's not. There are improvements that can and should be made to the game. However, contrary to Lissa's comments, I think the game was very well QA'd and balanced up through the end of Hell difficulty. There are many variations of classes that can complete the game up through the end of Hell difficulty (and none are so overpowered as to make the game trivial) and the item drops and crafting possibilities are more than enough to enable a person to complete hell difficulty. The problems arise in Inferno where Blizzard admitted they didn't QA or balance very carefully. The mob damage and health spike too fast and the drop rates on items that would enable you to deal with the rising difficulty don't drop enough. This has led to people to use non-fun mechanisms including graveyard rushing and dropping any skills that involve negating damage in favor of cheese builds like low health Force Armor builds (because why bother if the mobs are going to 1-shot you anyway).

My wish would be that instead of having level 61 (Act 1), 62 (Act 2), and 63 (Acts 3 and 4) mobs that they change it to level 61 (early Act 1), 62 (late Act 1), 63 (early Act 2), 64 (late Act 2), and 65 (Acts 3 and 4) with a more gradual increase in difficulty as you progress. However, that would probably mean going back and redoing a lot of the end game item design work, too, so it's probably not possible to do that quickly enough for a patch just a month after the game's release.

However, the foundation for the game is there. The game was well balanced and designed up through Hell difficulty. The only differences between Inferno and Hell difficulty are that boss packs have one more affix and all the mobs have more health and deal more damage. Allow better items to drop more frequently and tune down the extra health and damage, and the game will return to the well balanced realm that we all experienced in hell difficulty. I think that would be a good thing.

Then, we will be able to turn our attention to complaining about how useless Arcane Torrent and Energy Twister are, because after all, we have to have something to bitch about.

[Elric of Grans]

I was specifically referring to the Demon Hunter's lack of options; I have not played any other class past Nightmare, so cannot comment on them with any degree of certainty. I hear that the Witch Doctor is similar, having almost no viable skills past Nightmare (many apparently not viable in Normal even) and I suspect the Barbarian would also have a few `must-take to survive' skills, such as Revenge. The Monk seems to have a lot of really good options, but the class tends to get panned a lot as horrible; I do not really understand why so well (unless it is just Inferno as the problem, not the Monk). I very quickly recognised the Wizard as perhaps the best balanced class in the game, with a wide variety of largely well-balanced options. This also makes it the absolute worst class to base an opinion of game balance on, as it suffers the least from the problems

I would argue drops are poorly done across difficulties. It was very rare at any point in the game I got anything interesting; the entire game is incremental upgrades. Diablo has always relied on Bling to attract the gamers, but this game considerably lacks it. The improvements to Legendary and Set items will likely help considerably, but they are so rare as to be almost separate from the equation. More interesting drops (eg remove junk affixes, improve under-powered affixes, perhaps add some new effects) would go a long way to improving the game. Another issue is how drops tend to be well below your level; it is very rare to get a drop of your level (and even rarer that it is any good). This is especially bad in Act I from Nightmare up, as you struggle to get crafting materials due to the low drop levels. Then again, the Blacksmith also needs a lot of improvement; however, that is a different issue again.

[MongoJerry]

I was specifically referring to the Demon Hunter's lack of options; I have not played any other class past Nightmare, so cannot comment on them with any degree of certainty. I hear that the Witch Doctor is similar, having almost no viable skills past Nightmare (many apparently not viable in Normal even) and I suspect the Barbarian would also have a few `must-take to survive' skills, such as Revenge. The Monk seems to have a lot of really good options, but the class tends to get panned a lot as horrible; I do not really understand why so well (unless it is just Inferno as the problem, not the Monk). I very quickly recognised the Wizard as perhaps the best balanced class in the game, with a wide variety of largely well-balanced options. This also makes it the absolute worst class to base an opinion of game balance on, as it suffers the least from the problems

The Witch Doctor is a bad example to bring up, because I have played with several Lurkers and Amazon Basin players who love their witch doctors and have played them into hardcore Act 1 Inferno, and they use a variety of skillsets. It's fun to listen to witch doctor players compare notes with each other on teamspeak or Mumble regarding different skills and how they equip themselves. It seems like a fun class. Also, I've been running with Frag's new Witch Doctor (now in nightmare), and I'm quite as excited as he is regarding his no-pets build. I agree with him that it has enormous potential -- not as a variant but as one that could possibly make it all the way through Inferno. If someone is having trouble playing a class past nightmare that has tanking pets, strong crowd control, good dps, and good damage mitigation and prevention skills, then that person simply needs to l2p.

I don't know enough about Monks to discuss skillsets, but I can say that there are monks in hardcore Act 2 Inferno, so I know they are quite viable as well. I've pug'd with a few monks along the way, and they are the second most common hardcore level 60 besides the barbarian, so some people are finding ways to play them. I suspect that you may be right that they may have a more limited selection of skills that they tend to use. For example, I know that the passive that makes one's highest resistance carry across all resistances is a particular favorite. It sounds like Blizzard is taking a look at that passive and is looking at ways to reduce its strength while buffing other aspects of the Monks' skills, so I suspect we'll see quite a few Monk changes in 1.1.

I would argue drops are poorly done across difficulties. It was very rare at any point in the game I got anything interesting; the entire game is incremental upgrades. Diablo has always relied on Bling to attract the gamers, but this game considerably lacks it. The improvements to Legendary and Set items will likely help considerably, but they are so rare as to be almost separate from the equation. More interesting drops (eg remove junk affixes, improve under-powered affixes, perhaps add some new effects) would go a long way to improving the game. Another issue is how drops tend to be well below your level; it is very rare to get a drop of your level (and even rarer that it is any good). This is especially bad in Act I from Nightmare up, as you struggle to get crafting materials due to the low drop levels. Then again, the Blacksmith also needs a lot of improvement; however, that is a different issue again.

I agree partially. The drops are certainly good enough to get you through hell difficulty, but they aren't as exciting as they should be. Frag and I have talked about this quite a bit, and we seem to agree that nightmare and early hell feel like a "dead zone," because you don't get rares when you kill the bosses the first time in the difficulties and you don't get the Nephelem Valor stacks that you start getting part-way through Hell. Blizzard has already said that they're going to address this. The item designer was overruled and they're going to reimplement having rares drop from bosses the first time you kill a boss across all difficulties. I think this will address a lot of the issues of the "dead zone" in nightmare and early hell.

Also, they're making the blacksmith crafts cost less, so that should make crafting a more viable way to get items along the way as you progress. The blacksmith was effective for me and the hardcore Lurkers crew a few times while we were leveling up -- particularly the Illustrious Raid swords in nightmare that gave us about a 50% boost to our collective dps. But I agree the blacksmith could use some more work. We'll have to see what happens when the next patch comes out.

[RiotInferno]

Holy moly, Archon with Arcane Destruction rune is wiiiiicked, haha. Pretty much the Wizard's WoTB go-to spell when facing really tough mobs, or a large number of monsters. Sucks that the cooldown is so long on it but I guess people would just curb stomp through the game because it is amazingly good. I faced a couple huge packs of those scorpion like things in the Heart of Sin quest and got the duration up to over a minute

I prefer Orb over Disintegrate for the most part, because it just seems a more flexible ability to me. It's good for single targets or AoE, and you can kite better with it. I saw someone suggest Frost Nova, but for my playing style Blizzard with Stark Winter rune is utterly superior to me, especially since FN only freezes monsters for a split second, while with Blizzard, they are slowed for a longer period of time (even though not completely immobile) and take much more damage.

Archon is awesome! The cooldown can be mitigated slightly (I still don't know if critical mass actually helps there ), but the main point would be to murderize 105 enemies with it, that way it lasts for 120 seconds.

I just started A1/Hell, and this is still completely do-able. Hopefully I'll hit Inferno by the end of the weekend, and will be able to report on how viable playing an Archon really is.

[Lissa]

And Mongo, if you had been into Inferno in any serious amount, you would realize that Blizzard's QA is sorely lacking. The information is all around you on these forums, but you refuse to realize it. It goes beyond the difficulty of Inferno and the stupidity of how they decided to do it so arbitrarily, it also goes to viability of some skills and why others are way too powerful along with how some of the cheese/exploits got through. Face it, Blizzard's QA needs some pretty hefty work.

I believe your statement was that "Blizzard's QA has been steadily going down hill for years." That means that you believe that Blizzard's QA was much better in the past. My comment was to demonstrate that, no, in fact, Blizzard's QA was quite crummy in the past. Perhaps nostalgia is clouding your mind to just how buggy and broken D2 and especially LOD was at the time of their releases. Compared to those fiascos, the problems with D3, which do exist, are minor and more easily fixable in comparison. All they have to do is make it easier for people to get better gear and tune down the health and damage on the mobs in Inferno a bit. That's it. The skills that you claim to be "broken" in Inferno are not in fact broken. They don't suddenly change their effect in Inferno versus hell, right? (Well, perhaps Barbarian stuns shouldn't have their effect reduced so much in Inferno). The reason why some skills seem suddenly "broken" in Inferno is because of the massive health and spike damage that gets dealt in Inferno. Allow better gear to drop and tune down the mob health and damage in Inferno, and poof all those skills suddenly come back into play again just like they were in hell difficulty. Guess what Blizzard is going to do in 1.0.3? Allow better gear to drop and tone down Inferno mob health and damage. We'll see when the patch is released whether the changes are enough.

This is opposed to D2 and LOD, where patches had to rewrite the game code and fundamentally alter the skill systems in order to finally make a game that had at least some semblence of balance and playability. How long did it take between the release of D2 and the 1.10 LOD patch? Three years? And even after that, they had to continue patching to remove some gross problems. This isn't even to mention all of the duping problems that plagued the game throughout its tenure. Compared to all of the problems D2 and LOD had, the problems that D3 has are trivial.

I take it Mongo that you haven't paid attention to other games that Blizzard has produced since D2/LoD. Overall, they QA sucked during D2/LoD, but it's gotten far worse since then. If you had actually paid attention to some of the things going on with WoW along with some of the things going on in SC2, you'd realize that the QA back during D2/LoD was better (even if it was bad), than what we've seen over the last 5 years out of Blizzard. So yes, Blizzard's QA has gotten worse and that's not nostalgia on looking back at things, that's fact from looking at how bad the screw ups have been since D2/LoD was released and all the patching it got.

[Quark]

If you've played a Blizzard game and your take on it is that the QA is bad, I find the idea that you've played another company's game as well as quite suspect. I also seriously question the idea that Blizzard's gotten worse over time.

Limiting yourself to just the power level of the game ... no, not even close. D2 was not under such a microscope because it was a decidedly easier game. Anything was viable not because it was good, but because you didn't need good. Even with that, don't you remember Static Field? It trivialized the game and had a bugged formula for its radius to boot. That is not the only example, simply the most egregious one. Life Steal % was out of whack, so what was their eventual fix? They made it not work on some monsters. Well that's great, I'll just ignore those monsters now.

[Lissa]

If you've played a Blizzard game and your take on it is that the QA is bad, I find the idea that you've played another company's game as well as quite suspect. I also seriously question the idea that Blizzard's gotten worse over time.

Limiting yourself to just the power level of the game ... no, not even close. D2 was not under such a microscope because it was a decidedly easier game. Anything was viable not because it was good, but because you didn't need good. Even with that, don't you remember Static Field? It trivialized the game and had a bugged formula for its radius to boot. That is not the only example, simply the most egregious one. Life Steal % was out of whack, so what was their eventual fix? They made it not work on some monsters. Well that's great, I'll just ignore those monsters now.

Yes, I remember how static field worked in 1.0 D2, and yes, it was horribly broken. The point I'm making is that QA process for Blizzard is worse now than it was in the past. Look at it this way, we're 1 month into the game and they've already release 3 bug fix patches, broken other aspects with said patches, and generally did a slap fix for aspects of the game that both you and I have seen Quark. Even at it's worst, D2/LoD had better QA than what we're seeing here in D3 (and other games by Blizzard), glaring issues are slipping past QA here (like the Asian dupe bug). So yes, Blizzard's QA process has gotten worse (even though it was bad back in 2000 to 2003).

[Kurosu]

I agree that it has gotten worse, but I think that the fact that it's not even the same people working on the game is a significant factor, as most, if not all, of the people who worked on D1/D2 departed to other companies or to form their own.
Blizzard is now also joined with Activision, I don't really want to get into that, as there is enough information out there on the net about this merger and the involvement of the gentleman Robert Kotick for those interested.