Patch 1.0 & Release Discussion

[MonTy]

Hail all,

Patch 1.0 notes landed ashore today. Lots to be said, some interesting changes in there.

The new Scion character class requires that you've rescued her in the Sceptre of God once before she can be used. This is an account-wide setting. We've enabled the Scion on any existing accounts that have finished Normal difficulty before...She is aligned with all three core attributes (Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence) and starts in the center of the passive tree. She's only available once you've unlocked her by playing through Normal difficulty and rescuing her. Existing accounts that have finished Normal difficulty before start with her unlocked.

The big deal with the Scion being introduced is that she cuts off the middle of the skill tree, so if you need to easily reach opposite sides of the tree you'll want to be a Scion. We'll have to wait for the final skill tree to be released to talk more about it, but builds such as Vaal Pact Ghost Reaver will probably need to be a Scion. *edit, seems like she may not completely cut off the middle. Will wait for final skill tree for further comments.

Four month challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start. All your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new economies, complete challenges and climb the ladder!

Domination: A variety of powerful Shrines now spawn throughout Wraeclast, surrounded by large groups of monsters that are influenced by their power. These monsters receive substantial bonuses or are protected by their shrine's effects in some way. If you are able to tag the shrine, you receive these powers for a short time. It's often very risky to run in and try to claim the shrine, but it is a gamble that can pay off. One of the new challenges is to tag each of the shrine types.
Nemesis: Nemesis is a Hardcore league (characters who die are coverted to Standard characters). Rare monsters have one guaranteed mod from the Nemesis Pool, which makes the fight substantially harder. One of the challenges is to kill a rare with each of the Nemesis mods.

Thanks to the item balance changes, I'll probably only be playing in new leagues from here on out. I hit my goal of 90 with my Softcore character, and I'll never be able to afford some of the existing uniques that are being turned into legacy items. I'll get more into that below. But new leagues will certainly be for those who want a fresh economy (well mostly) and a clean stash. People will still trade from the existing leagues to the new leagues. Heck I know a group of people offering 15 standard exalts to anyone who is willing to level a character to level 70 in the new leagues within a few days. But I do enjoy people trading all kinds of items opposed to never finding anything of value to trade for in Standard. The actual league traits sound interesting. I could see it being harder than expected, depending what the Shrines or Nemesis mods are.

The new challenge leagues have introduced five new base types of items - four new Flasks and a Ring.

Now that's interesting. Four new flasks? I assume one will be Evasion Flask akin to Granite flasks. Maybe an Evasion Ring too. But not sure what the other flask types could be. ES? Raise Max stats? All Resistances?

The Item Quantity Support Gem can not be obtained in these Challenge leagues.
Increased Item Quantity mods cannot spawn on Magic and Rare items in these leagues.

Huge nerf to Magic Find. Also will reduce the number of items on the screen. I'm happy to see that, as it got out of control in large groups.

I Love, love, love the new trigger gems. Should be very handy using Curse on Hit, Cast on Crit, and Cast when Damage Taken. Also transforing items into a minion that fights for you sounds awesome, with Animate Guardian and Animate Weapon.

I'm not too excited about Mind over Matter Keystone (When hit, 30% of damage is taken from mana before life) or Avatar of Fire (50% of your physical/lightning/cold damage is converted to fire damage. You can't deal non-fire damage). I just always seem mana starved and Avatar is certainly a niche build. But I'll give them a shot one day.

Some of the previously drop-only Skill and Support Gems are available from a new side quest. The new Trigger Gems are also available in this quest. The other new side quest offers utility flasks and rare items.

Awesome. Maybe Elemental Weakness, Elemental Hit, Added Chaos Damage, Multistrike, or Chain?

The Solaris Temple has been reduced to two levels. If you previously had the Solaris Temple Level 3 waypoint, you will be awarded the Solaris Temple Level 2 waypoint.

Wooohooo! Less chance to disconnect and lose your progress.

The experience equation has been changed so that the minimum experience you receive when too high or too low level is 2% (before it is split among the players). This means that farming non-Map areas until level 100 is actually plausible now.

This is fantastic. Sometimes you just want to take a break from mapping but the experience felt so miniscule from outside of them. Especially once you get to 85+.

Characters now receive 8 life per level rather than 6.

Seems small, but massive change with the boost to life passives. I'm expecting life builds to be much more popular now.

Item drops from Merveil, Brutus, Vaal Oversoul, Piety and Dominus have been substantially increased in Cruel and Merciless difficulties.

Smart. There's just something enjoyable about loot explosions once you kill a boss. Also second nature to people who did quick boss runs in D2.

When using Orbs of Fusing, you're now 233% more likely to roll four linked sockets and 25% more likely to roll five linked sockets.

THANK GOD.

Some of the rarest Unique items can now only drop from end-game Maps.

Huge blow to low life MF sporkers running only in Docks or Lunaris. Sure you can still make a lot of from turning rares into chaos or alts. But there was always that hope of Shavs dropping.

Balance Changes - Unique Items:...Shavronne's Wrappings: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced. Soul Taker: Increased Physical Damage has been reduced. Kaom's Heart: Increased Life has been reduced to 500. Increased Fire Damage has been added. Divine Orb used on an existing version would only update the life.

Big deal here. As I expected they've shifted into letting the game have legacy items. Meaning the existing Kaom's Hearts will NOT be nerfed in the Standard/Hardcore leagues. That means the individuals that already found these will have a huge advantage since other people cannot find them after tomorrow, only trade for it. Except those Uniques will be worth several hundred exalts so we won't be able to afford them either. Now if you only care about PvM, this won't matter as the game is balanced around the new changes, so not having a legacy unique won't mean you can't get to level 100 or do the highest maps, just you'll never be as powerful as others who have them.

Personally I dislike the feeling I can never find the strongest items in the game. But I get why they're doing it. I'd rather just play in the new leagues with a fresh start and new economy. They've hinted in past months that they play magic: the gathering and like the idea of powerful cards in old legacy formats. I'd rather they just nerf all existing items but I could imagine the headaches and time consumption from doing so.

Balance Changes - Active Skills:
The following skills have had their mana costs reduced: Ethereal Knives, Flame Totem, Searing Bond, Fire Trap, Detonate Dead, Shock Nova, Firestorm, Arc, Split Arrow and Whirling Blades.

Big fan of reducing mana on these skills. It was very hard to link support gems to these while leveling with untwinked gear and limited mana. I remember raging from having four mana pots at level 28 and it not being enough to support my skills :P

Balance Changes - Auras:
For all Auras: Base area of effect has been increased. The area of effect bonus from quality has been doubled.
The mana cost for all auras except Clarity has been changed to 60% reservation.

Wow. Huge change. Will have to see if better or worse, but people will still be able to run 2-3 auras with reduced mana, talents, blood magic or EB. I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could get 4-5 running still. The rest of the notes detail that the actual auras have been buffed, except for purity, so it's not just a straight up nerf.

Cleave: The dual wielding penalty for Cleave is now multiplicative and includes elemental damage.

Long time coming. Elemental Cleave Templar was waaaay too easy to play, equip, and level compared to other builds. I've done untwinked ele cleave builds that have over 1k damage in Normal.

You now can't use an Orb of Fusing on a fully linked item or a Jeweller's Orb on a fully socketed item.

Developers confirmed this is not for four linked items. But very handy for six sockets/links. Not that it's happened to me but I've known people who have screwed up a six socket.

I didn't touch on everything, so be sure to check out the rest of the patch notes if you haven't.

[Chesspiece_face]

My quick experience from playing a few minutes tonight as my Ranger:

-Stat points seem to be much more available with the equivalent build on the new tree. I've got slightly more str and int on this build but a whopping 60+ more dex.

-The change to Auras is HUGE. And no, any buff they gave to the individual auras doesn't make up for the loss of running multiples. Previously I was running Hatred, Anger, and Grace. All of these auras synergized with my Gear and Skill gems so that had I some seriously fun fire damage going on. Now it feels like I lost a good chunk of what made the character fun and unique. I understand the design issue of having such a large part of the uniqueness of a character relegated to passive auras which require no skill or thought to use, but when they took away those options they didn't replace them with anything meaningful.

For me, it also puts me in a damned-if-you-do / damned-if-you-don't situation. I can no longer run both a damage aura and Grace. If I take the damage aura to help my kill speed suddenly I'm getting hit with all sorts of projectiles. This doesn't pose any real threat for the most part just adds a load of annoyance because my gameplay is being suddenly broken up by hit recoveries. On the other hand I can start running Grace, which is purely a convenience choice so that I don't have to deal with that BS but now I lose a good chunk of kill power just so I can NOT be annoyed.

-It may just be randomness, but it seems as if running maps is much more self-sufficient in that drop rates for more maps is increased. I played for about 20-30 minutes (Ran docks and a Dunes map) and walked away with 3 more lvl 66 maps and a 68.

-Desyncs are still a big issue. and over all game responsiveness is pretty sluggish at the moment. Hopefully they can improve this, but with how consistently Desyncs have been an issue for the last year and a half I'm not holding my breath.

In other news if anyone running the Lurkers guild on my friends list sees this feel free to throw me an invite. Not sure how often I will play but I'm sure I can contribute to the guild bank when I do happen to jump on.

[shoju]

Pm your IGN, and I'll get you added

[shoju]

I've noticed a couple of things on my scion in the domination league.

Specifically related to the Scion: The Skill / support gem assortment from quest rewards is by and large, garbage.
This can be attributed to the fact that the Class is associated with all 3 attributes.
I have completed all of the quests related to Skill Gems in Normal Difficulty.

The most notable glaring hole in the process, is that I have yet to be offered a Life Leech, or Life Gain on Hit Gem.

Skill Gem Drops seem to be nerfed, or I'm just having awful luck
AS I'm finishing up A1 Normal, I'm just not seeing a large cross section of gems drop. I don't understand why, but at this point, I just don't seem to be having much luck in finding gems, or.... gems that aren't total garbage.

The 4 Link Buff, seems to be affecting drops
In Anarchy, I was able to sell 4L's pretty early on, to give myself some "bank". So far, I'm seeing more drop than I would ever believe, and after talking with a few people, it seems to be a common occurence.

Finding Good Gear, is still frustrating.
I agreed 100% with what GGG said about the problem level range, and the problem with gear. As I've noted in several of my posts, by the time I hit the mid 40's, things get REALLY hard in the new leagues because things just don't drop often that would be upgrades.

Part of this is my abhorrence towards IIR / IIQ. I'm hoping that as I level, the lack of IIQ on gear will make rolling items better.

The leveling curve is....... WAY out of whack
I'm level 39, and I just hit Lunaris WP. I don't farm zones in Normal or Cruel Difficulty. I'm just going straight through, doing quests, getting "close" to full clears on zones, and I'm just blowing through levels. Lunaris is 33, 34 on the final level. I'm afraid at such a low level, I'm also going to get hit by the penalties, purely because I'm clearing zones.

[LochnarITB]

Wow, something totally new with the release. I just had a queue on login! It said something to the effect that there were too many people currently playing but they were working to add capacity. I waited probably less than a minute, but I was really surprised to finally see one. I had actually been dumped from a game and was logging back in. It ended up flushing the zone I had been in.

Speaking of getting dumped, has anyone else had a problem getting in to fight Dominus? When I tried to get in for my Cruel fight, I would see a faded version of the tower and then get logged out. It took at least 4 or 5 tries before it fully loaded, but then I had no more problems with all the times I re-entered because I ended up having to zerg phase 3 to get through a huge swarm without dying to all the attacks and aoe.


[edit] Hmm, three times now. In a zone. Dumped from game. Small queue on login. Zone flushed.

[Frag]

Another good change is that farming act bosses is almost exactly like doing Mephisto/Diablo D2 runs. Mervail & Piety are both good targets as they're quickly repeatedly runnable, unlike Vaal.

[shoju]

Well Vaal sucks anyway

[LochnarITB]

[edit] Hmm, three times now. In a zone. Dumped from game. Small queue on login. Zone flushed.

Getting real old real fast. Trying to get to Piety last night. Clear Lunaris 2 to get to the stairs. Up to the last chunk of 3 then boot and flush. And again. And again. Logged for a while hoping that folks would clear off and the servers could cool down a bit. Almost to Piety again and the system message says they're rebooting the servers to apply a server side patch. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Hmph!

[LochnarITB]

Merciless Piety has finally bit the bit bucket after a couple more almost clears. Now it is time to try to get the new Merciless waypoints. The servers have taken them a couple times too.

[shoju]

Congrats!

Maybe once I get my FP witches gems leveled up, we can go blow her up, and have some fun times! (If you're up to grouping)

[shoju]

The Imperial Gardens can go to hell.

Too Big.
Too many lag issues.
Too many pathing issues.
Too many OMFG just add statues packs.

Devourer's. WTF is up with these things!? I got DESTROYED by one. it was a rare, but the mods were Exra Life, Life Regen, and Resists Cold. It just destroyed me, three times. I blew through all my pots, had a rejuv totem running, and it was cursed with Warlord's, and it just absoultely decimated me.

[LochnarITB]

The Imperial Gardens can go to hell.

Too Big.
Too many lag issues.
Too many pathing issues.
Too many OMFG just add statues packs.

Devourer's. WTF is up with these things!? I got DESTROYED by one. it was a rare, but the mods were Exra Life, Life Regen, and Resists Cold. It just destroyed me, three times. I blew through all my pots, had a rejuv totem running, and it was cursed with Warlord's, and it just absoultely decimated me.

The things I really hate there are those uglies that eat corpses and spit them at you. Even with my cold witch shattering lots of bad guys, they manage to find something to scavenge and then, even from way off screen, <splat> <splat> <face plant>. The whole place is move move move because even the time it takes to target and cast are likely to get you killed. I've taken to throwing fire traps and skeletons constantly as warning bells and cannon fodder, not the way I wanted to have to play my cold crit ice spear/freezing pulse witch.

[LennyLen]

The Imperial Gardens can go to hell.

Too Big.
Too many lag issues.
Too many pathing issues.
Too many OMFG just add statues packs.

Devourer's. WTF is up with these things!? I got DESTROYED by one. it was a rare, but the mods were Exra Life, Life Regen, and Resists Cold. It just destroyed me, three times. I blew through all my pots, had a rejuv totem running, and it was cursed with Warlord's, and it just absoultely decimated me.

The things I really hate there are those uglies that eat corpses and spit them at you. Even with my cold witch shattering lots of bad guys, they manage to find something to scavenge and then, even from way off screen, <splat> <splat> <face plant>. The whole place is move move move because even the time it takes to target and cast are likely to get you killed. I've taken to throwing fire traps and skeletons constantly as warning bells and cannon fodder, not the way I wanted to have to play my cold crit ice spear/freezing pulse witch.

They bug me as well. Not because of damage they do but because enemies that run are away are annoying as hell.

[shoju]

Today's mini patch began the inevitable march to oblivion for the Cast on Damage Taken Trigger Gem.

It was just too good.

[Frag]

I don't think there is a call for falling skies comments. It currently can proc up to 1000 times per second, now it can proc up to 4 times per second. While this will nerf a few of the rather inventive reflect murdering builds (that occasionally murdered themselves as well), 4 procs a second is not a major nerf for how most people used it (proccing defensive skills).

[shoju]

Oh, you should go to the official forums. It's insanity over there about it.

I don't have a problem with the changes. I personally feel like a support gem that is a no brainer for any build to find room to use, is too good.

After watching videos of people using it for defense with EC - IC - DT

And then watching curse bots running Blood rage, enduring cry, the unique that gives you charges after your other charges are spent, and just spamming curses to live, while the gem handles the offense (with no cast animation, and no mana cost),

It was inevitable that the gem was going to get changed. Quickly.

I'm glad that I don't have one yet. I would be too tempted to try the silly shenanigans with it that people are moaning about.

4 times a second is still plenty.

[Frag]

Reading the official forums for ANY reasonably popular game should be considered a form of insanity, I'm certain. I'm sure there is plenty of overblown puffery about how bad things are for 'my build!' over there, but quite frankly, if you are proccing FOUR discharges a second and that isn't enough for you, boo-hoo, you still will one shot everything that isn't a high health rare.

[shoju]

Reading the official forums for ANY reasonably popular game should be considered a form of insanity, I'm certain. I'm sure there is plenty of overblown puffery about how bad things are for 'my build!' over there, but quite frankly, if you are proccing FOUR discharges a second and that isn't enough for you, boo-hoo, you still will one shot everything that isn't a high health rare.

Yeah, a guy is going on and on and on about how this "ruins" his build, and how he should get a free respec, and blah blah blah, I told him, if he built his entire char around using that one support, and this miniscule change somehow renders it ruined, he did it wrong, and should be punished for a terrible build.