# Topic 1.13 PTR is LIVE – Patch Notes & FAQ # | 12/10/2009 02:

[Taem]

EDIT: Decided to post what is already available on the Battle.net forums: Link

“We traveled for an eternity...” - Marius

Travel no longer my friends - the Diablo II 1.13 Public Test Realm is LIVE!

Q: How do I begin testing on the PTR?
A: When you start Diablo II change your Battle.net gateway to “ClassicBeta”. When you log in the 1.13 patch will be applied to your game and you can begin testing the changes made in the patch. Since it's a new realm you'll need to create a new account.

Q: I don't see the ClassicBeta realm in my gateway list!
A: Log into one of the other gateways first, then back out and the classicbeta realm will appear.

Q: What if I want to play the normal game again?
A: Simply choose any of the other (non-PTR) gateways. Your game will be reverted to version 1.12 and you’ll be able to play on the live realms as normal.

Q: Where are my characters?
A: The PTR realm is separate from the live realms so your current characters aren’t carried over. You’ll need to create a new character to begin testing. But, cheats are enabled and you may use the following cheats by typing them into chat while in a game:
Gold # - Will provide the amount of gold specified
Level # - Will increase your level to the number specified
Waypoints 1 - Will activate all waypoints. You must still reach an act before that act’s waypoints will be unlocked with this cheat.

Q: What happens to my characters once the PTR testing period ends?
A: They remain on the PTR realm to be removed once the test ends. Characters on the PTR realm won’t transfer to the normal realms.

Q: How long with the PTR run for?
A: As long as we deem necessary to ensure the patch and changes are solid.

Q: Where can I give feedback and what kind of feedback do you want?
A: All 1.13 PTR feedback and bug reports should ONLY be posted in the Diablo II Test Realm Forum here: http://forums.battle.net/board.html?forumI...02&sid=3000

• All post should have a subject line that clearly describes the bug or feedback being given
• Use the search feature to ensure a thread doesn’t already exist before posting
• When reporting a bug include as much information as you can, including steps to reproduce it if possible
• Any non-constructive posts may be deleted and the poster’s privilege to post revoked
• This is a chance for you to ensure the 1.13 patch includes changes and balance tweaks that you think would lead to a better overall experience. Getting the information to us in a clear and logical way helps us understand your view and makes it easier for us to collect feedback for any potential updates to the 1.13 patch before release.

Q: What is the new "Mystery" mentioned in the patch notes?
A: It's related to the respec system implemented in the patch and can grant additional respecs beyond the three given for completing the Den of Evil quest in each difficulty. You'll have to play to find out how though.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Patch 1.13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

A new Mystery has been revealed!

- Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again,
that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies
within Diablo's Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil
to the Throne of Destruction...


Major Bugs

- Fixed an item dupe bug.
- Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.


Minor Bugs

- Uber Mephisto now checks for both Uber Baal and Uber Diablo to be killed before spawning summoned minions (Before he would only check for Uber Baal).
- The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the window loses and then regains focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in windowed mode when it lost focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window wouldn't center properly when it was created.

Specific changes/improvements

- Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.
- Increased the drop rate of high runes.
- Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).
- Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.
- Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.
- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.
- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.
- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.
- Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.
- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.
- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.
- Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.
- Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.
- When creating a single player game, pressing the 'Enter' key now automatically creates a Hell difficulty game if possible.
- When creating a game, each difficulty button is now bound to a unique key: Normal 'R', Nightmare 'N', and Hell 'H'.
- The 'Enter Chat' Button in the battle.net waiting room is now bound to the 'Enter' key.
- Added the windows system buttons to the game window (MIN, MAX, CLOSE).
- Added new command line parameter '-nofixaspect' which allows users to not fix the aspect ratio to 4:3 when maximizing windowed mode. This lets the game 'stretch' to fill your monitor.
- Added support for '-sndbkg' command line switch. This enables sound in background.
- Added support for '-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed' command line options.


Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes


Amazon

-Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of Explosion effect by 33% and Immolation effect by 50%.
-Immolation Arrow - Explosion effect damage increased by 20%.
-Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.


Assassin

-Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.


Barbarian

-Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.
-Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.


Paladin

-Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.


Druid

-Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.
-Werebear - Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per point.
-Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.


Necromancer

-Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).
-Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.
-Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.


Sorceress

-Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of Firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.
-Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.
-Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.
-Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

[ Post edited by Bashiok ]

[Taem]

NT

Does the test realm only have parts of the patch Blizzard is currently testing, or is this "the" patch? Because if TPPK, the Barbdrop exploit, and the aura-stacking exploit are not fixed in the new patch, then Blizzard has failed miserably! Their top priority should have been fixing "bugs" and "exploits", then after that rebalancing skills and items, and finally adding new content. Their priorities, if this is "the" patch, are seriously illogical, even if this is a 10-year old game. I don't know what to think as of right now.

EDIT-afterthought: I should add that I greatly appreciate the respec ability. To be honest, I just like playing the game and if *no* new content and *no* rebalancing occurred, I would be fine with that so long as the exploits were fixed so I could play this game past normal in public games without getting killed by some hacker. That is really what is ruining this game and driving people away from it, not the lack of new content! We'll see how it all pans out in the end.

[vor_lord]

Their priorities, if this is "the" patch, are seriously illogical, even if this is a 10-year old game. I don't know what to think as of right now.

Look at the list of changes, and count how many of them required that someone make changes in the underlying program code. There are quite a few, but most of them are at a system level (video changes etc). Compare that to the list of changes that are simply adjustments in the mpq files. Those are changes that any experienced modder could make.

Adjusting balance and adding new content requires a different skill set than trying to plug exploits. I think if it was easy to fix such exploits, they would do it. But a game this old... I'm glad they are still doing anything for it.

I love the removal of Iron Maiden. If I play again, that is enough to finally move me into hardcore beyond dabbling.

[Taem]

Look at the list of changes, and count how many of them required that someone make changes in the underlying program code. There are quite a few, but most of them are at a system level (video changes etc). Compare that to the list of changes that are simply adjustments in the mpq files. Those are changes that any experienced modder could make.

Adjusting balance and adding new content requires a different skill set than trying to plug exploits. I think if it was easy to fix such exploits, they would do it. But a game this old... I'm glad they are still doing anything for it.

I love the removal of Iron Maiden. If I play again, that is enough to finally move me into hardcore beyond dabbling.

While I do agree with what your saying in regards to it being a 10-year old game, you'd think Blizzards continued maintenance of Battle.net, not to mention their TOS about using hacks on their restricted realms, kind of go hand-in-hand with fixing game-breaking exploits. What kind of message are they [Blizzard] sending by not fixing an exploit that allows you to kill any player anywhere any time [TPPK]? Where you aware that there are roughly 3-5 Nightmare and Hell games up at any time in hardcore, and if you join any of these games, you will most likely be killed by a TPPK'er within minutes? You simply cannot advance past Normal difficulty in public games in Diablo 2 anymore! If you ask me, you can't get much more game-breaking than this.

By neglecting to address game-breaking issues directly relating to play on Battle.net, this speaks volumes about Blizzards stance on the Battle.net service. If they continue to offer Battle.net free of charge, they inherit the responsibility to make sure their games are playable on Battle.net, else they might as well cancel battle.net and discontinue support for a game completely when it has aged past it's prime (to be determined by sales). By keeping Battle.net free for all players as part of Diablo, Star Craft, and War Craft, I expect Blizzard to maintain the game to standards that are playable - i.e. fix game-breaking exploits. They recently made a patch for War Craft 3 (a 7-year old game) to fix a game-breaking exploit, and I applaud them for that.

[RANT]
On a personal note, I could care less about any new "content", skill changes, or anything else they have planned for Diablo because I just enjoy playing the game, however I want to be able to play the game... The fact that I cannot advance past Normal difficulty in public games without being TPPK'd or drop-hacked on Battle.net is... negligent. Fixing these types of exploits should have and always should be their top priority![/RANT]

[Hammerskjold]

Adjusting balance and adding new content requires a different skill set than trying to plug exploits. I think if it was easy to fix such exploits, they would do it. But a game this old... I'm glad they are still doing anything for it.

I love the removal of Iron Maiden. If I play again, that is enough to finally move me into hardcore beyond dabbling.

Yep. Can't agree more with ya. I'm giving this one a tentative thumbs up for now. Unless they add a last minute p.s. like 'oh yeah, these are only for ONLINE only', I'm quite pleased they did what they could under the circumstances.

[Taem]

I think if it was easy to fix such exploits, they would do it.

I searched for Drop Barb Exploit Fix and came up with this from numerous web-sites:

Basic description of the 'sploit:
An entity that exceeds 18 (or 19 - something like that) states causes the server to send a packet (0xAA) to the clients in which the state info is too long with no terminator. This results in a deadlocked client, and the victim must end the Diablo II process before they are disconnected from Battle.net (there will be a short delay thereafter as well). This can lead to literal EZPKs.

How to protect yourself against this:
You'll need a third party program that appends a self-fix to the packet so the game can resolve.

What that means is it blocks packet 0xAA if it is corrupt and send the correct packet. How goddamn hard is that? Script kiddies figured out how to fix it without messing with any of the game code or slowing down the servers! Don't tell me Blizzard can't fix it! Pure unadulterated negligence. You have to run a 3rd party program which will most likely get you banned to protect yourself from this exploit!

For something that would require a bit of coding:

As for TPPK, I've read from modders that it's as simple as adding a sanity check after attacks that if target goes hostile, current attack abruptly ends. It's a simple Null modifier that can be added to every skill. Unlike the Drop Barb Exploit, this would require a bit of coding. But again, the only way to defend yourself against TPPK is with 3rd party programs - that will most likely get you banned - which leave instantly when hostiled.

I don't know enough about the Aura-stacking glitch to comment on that.

[vor_lord]

Those do sound easy to fix.

To be honest with respect to all the myriad town portal hostile attacks... just add a 30 second timer after you go hostile before it takes effect. Nothing tricky there. That might even be enough time to get away from the Barb Drop Exploit you describe here.

[Zarathustra]

Hm... I may need to reinstall D2 and see the changes. I haven't played since before synergies were all the rage.

[Hammerskjold]

So, has anyone here actually played the test patch yet?

Since I can't at the moment, new computer that I'm on has a strict NO GAMES policy, and it will take a while for me to set up my old gaming one.

Just wondering if anyone has some direct practical experience of the difference between 1.12 and 1.13. I don't mean just what the patch notes says, but in a live game session.

[Archon_Wing]

Only took a few years to deal with those wisps.:P

Ah, actually most of these changes look decent, but of course I assume the realms are all hacked to hell.

But in any case, I'm quite shocked they're still patching this