Diablo 3 Patch 2.6.8 Patch Notes

Diablo 3 PTR Patch Notes – 2.6.8

General

• Infernal Machines and Organs are now subject to vacuum pick-up
• Crafting plans from Bounty Caches are now guaranteed to drop unless all plans have been learned

Seasons

• A new Season Theme has been added for Season 20, the Season of the Forbidden Archives:
  • For the duration of Season 20, all slots in Kanai’s Cube will be able to select Legendary powers from Weapon, Armor, or Jewelry
    • This means you could select three Armor powers, three Weapon powers, three Jewelery powers, or any other combination thereof across all categories
    • Items are not self-additive or multiplicative (meaning, you cannot stack multiples of the same item’s power)
    • Once the Season has ended and characters roll over to Non-Season, players will have all currently active powers in their Kanai’s Cube reset
    • Developer’s Note: As we outlined in our Developer Insight blog, we want to continue to get creative (and maybe a little crazy) with the Season Themes and powers we add to the game. We heard from some players that they preferred themes that made your character directly feel more powerful rather than needing to focus on the environment around you. If that describes you, then the Season of Forbidden Archives should be right up your alley, and we’re really interested to see how this changes the game for Season 20.
• Two new Seasonal rewards are available for players who fully complete the Season 20 Journey, including a new portrait frame and pet

Classes

• Crusader
  • Heaven’s Fury
    • The animation for the Fires of Heaven rune can no longer be cancelled early.

Items

• Developer’s Note: With Patch 2.6.8, we’re adding three(!) new class sets with similar goals to those we included in the previous patch. Each set was designed primarily with boosting long-requested skills and play styles we lifted directly from community feedback. Frenzy, Spirit Barrage, and Hydra were requests that offered a lot of opportunity for gameplay exploration, and we’re looking forward to seeing what players do with these new tools at their disposal. Additional changes to associated supplemental Legendaries have been included to round out these builds. It is critical when providing feedback on these sets to include whether or not you were using the Season 20 buff during your testing; while feedback of any kind is welcome, we’re especially interested in Non-Seasonal testing as that will better reflect the long-term performance of these sets.
• Mantle of Channeling
  • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun
• Barbarian
  • New Class Set: Horde of the Ninety Savages
    • 2-Piece Bonus: Double the effectiveness of all Shouts. Feared Enemies take double damage.
    • 4-Piece Bonus: Each stack of Frenzy reduces damage taken by 5%.
    • 6-Piece Bonus: Frenzy deals 1000% increased damage per stack.
  • Undisputed Champion
    • Frenzy gains the effect of every rune and deals 300-400% increased damage.
  • Bastion’s Revered
    • Frenzy now stacks up to 10 times and hits an additional time per stack. Each additional hit will chain to any enemies within 15 yards and the damage is split between all affected enemies.
• Witch Doctor
  • New Class Set: Mundunugu’s Regalia
    • 2-Piece Bonus: Big Bad Voodoo now follows you and lasts twice as long.
    • 4-Piece Bonus: Gain 50% damage reduction for 30 seconds when you enter the Spirit Realm.
    • 6-Piece Bonus: Spirit Barrage deals increased damage equal to 50 times your Mana Regeneration per Second.
  • The Barber
    • Instead of dealing direct damage, your Spirit Barrage now accumulates on the target. When you stop casting, it explodes dealing 225-250% 400-500% of the accumulated damage to all enemies within 15 yards.
  • Gazing Demise
    • Spirit Barrage gains the Phantasm rune. Each active Phantasm lasts twice as long, increases the damage of Spirit Barrage by 40-50% 100-150%, and also increases the attack rate from Manitou spectres.
    • Now always rolls with Critical Hit Chance instead of Life Per Second.
• Wizard
  • New Class Set: The Typhon’s Veil
    • 2-Piece Bonus: Double the duration of Hydras and increase the number of heads on multi-headed Hydras by two.
    • 4-Piece Bonus: Damage taken is reduced by 8% for each Hydra head alive as long as there is one available. Each time you take damage, a Hydra heads dies.
    • 6-Piece Bonus: Hydras deal 1000% increased damage for each Hydra head alive.
  • Serpent’s Sparker
    • You may have one extra Hydra active at a time and they deal 450-600% increased damage.
  • The Magistrate
    • Frost Hydra Your Hydras now periodically casts Frost Nova and deal 450-600% increased damage.
  • Etched Sigil
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.
  • Deathwish
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.

Bugs

• Several issues with adding/removing players to group and starting new games as a group have been resolved
• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings
  • Fixed an issue where the set bonus did not increase damage reduction when using Devour – Voracious
• Crusader
  • Corrected the spelling of “Imperius” on the flavor text for several pieces of the Aegis of Valor set
  • Fixed an issue where the bolts cast by Fist of the Heavens – Divine Well failed to zap enemies

All three Tactics abilities are considered shouts. One of the Barb passives explicitly states that.

Correct. The 2-Piece applies to everything in the Tactics category.

That’s actually pretty much the intention, though less Tom and Jerry and more Predator. ? Sometimes, we like experimenting with a different approach to game play so that every set isn’t just “do more damage.” Fear is a potentially interesting, but underutilized, mechanic and actually has a lot of currently unused synergy among items and other classes (particularly Witch Doctor). Independently, I’ve been theorizing around a build that capitalizes off of working with a zDPS Witch Doctor, which we haven’t seen much of for a long time, and I’m looking forward to seeing if it plays out.

We’re trying something different and outside the box. It’s almost certainly going to need some work (most of our new stuff does). This is exactly why we have PTR, and we’d like to see what people come up with during the testing period. Personally, I see the fantasy in playing a terrifying, feral warrior that enemies flee from, and there’s definitely some tools available to make herding fleeing foes a play style or mini-game of sorts. How and if that plays out long-term will take a little experimenting and observation, and we hope you give it a go and let us know your thoughts!

I believe this is the case. I know, at the very least, it is for Wizard as I’ve play-tested the set already. Haven’t had time to do both Barb and WD yet though.

Whooooooa whoa whoa, that’s now how any of this works. It’s still three total cube powers – you can just pick those 3 from any category, instead of having to have one from each. If I need to make this clearer for future versions of the patch notes, I absolutely will! Apologies for any unintended confusion.
haha. true. but they have been planning and working on this schedule long before they realized DH and Necro were behind I think.

Yes and no. We have a lot of work to do on both Demon Hunter and Necro, and we’ve known this for some time. But that work also takes time (as does the art assets related to their upcoming sets; sometimes art happens faster than design necessitates and vice-versa). Part of the reason the order of class sets have come out in the order they have is because the art, rigging, and implementation graphically was ready first.

There has been no change to Spirit Barrage or its interaction with Ring of Emptiness. However, utilizing Ring of Emptiness with the new set might be a bit challenging, in terms of juggling which skills you want to use to benefit from it.

We’re going to see how it plays out for now, but we’ll keep an eye on it throughout PTR testing to see if any changes need to be made. As always, we’ll prioritize the health of the game first. ? Great question!

This is a very astute observation and accurate assessment. Balance does take time, as well as a lot of research. We’re also adding new content on top of that with the new sets. So it’s going to be a bit of back and forth, and it’s going to take time. We’ll do our best to always continue moving forward, as much as we can at a time.

Not every player enjoys the enjoys the environmental buffs. We actually received some of that feedback based on this current Season, and decided that we should have more “personal mechanical” buff options so we can swap off between those two preferences.

Not everyone’s going to like every Seasonal buff, (and that’s okay) but if we can have something a lot of people like on a somewhat regular basis and rotate between people’s preferences, everyone gets something once in a while and that feels like a win.

There are no plans to add new Set Dungeons for the additional class sets at this time.