Diablo 2 1.13 PTR is UP

Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

BRAVO, I love the:
Nerfed hammerdin
Elimination of Iron Maiden
Reduced lightning mastery
Possible viable new builds, Hydra Sorc, Fire Bow Zon Using Phoenix

Too bad they didnt eliminate teleport, but this should scramble things up enough until D3 in 2011 (LOL).
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Edit: Qveasd you fudging ninja... :D You've done this to me before. I suppose I should post faster or I'll get hired by Blizz one of these days. :hammerhead: :doh:

That's because you always get carried away once you start writing a post. If you get hired by Blizzard, 1.14 will take 5 years, and by the end of it all skill trees will have been completely reworked, loads of new items added, and probably zero bugs fixed. :p


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

-Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

Are they nuts? Lightning sorcs is already the weakest of all the sorcs. Only fireball and blizz sorc are good in PvP now.
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Anyone know from past experience how long PTR ususally lasts? Thanks.

this is is the first PTR in the history of D2 so we don't know:P
but in WoW it's between 2 weeks and 2 months(bigger the patch the longer the wait)

edit: there was a beta(offline) for 1.10 with 3,5 months between the beta and the final release



 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

So let me get this straight. Easy obvious bugs like the Anya bug and charge lock are still not fixed? :coffee:
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

My first thoughts after playing on the PTR for 2 hours:

  • Diablo Clone spawn remains the same? Soj Dupers are rewarded as usual? Seriously?
  • High Rune drops are increased by 1-2,5 %???(Duping is rewarded) Seriously?
  • TPPK is fixed or not?
  • I was under the impression that boss runs should be reduced, but there will be more boss runs.(Respec token)
  • Hammerdin bot stopped? Iron maiden gone.. Welcome to the age of the frenzy barb bot..unstoppable.

I would like to continue testing but the server is down....If this is the final word on the 1.13 patch i am disappointed, but not surprised at all.

Nilaripper
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

I think fend bug is impossible to fix. I mean, it would require gigantic resources to fix it. The same bug was with zeal - and they never fixed it I think; they just changed the number of hits, right? Or did they fix it.

Anyway, I dont like this patch; it broke hammerdins (Im still not sure by how much), it broke lightning sorcs; it only buffed whirlwind barbs.

I wonder what the uber quest will be - someone has to collect the 4 bottles.

Respecing will be possible in classic (I think) - Ive did the den of evil quest (but in LOD) and it gives the respec.

From the classic point of view, the game will be seriously broken - hammerdins become less useful and WW barbs become kings of duels, with even more damage and no IM.
The game also becomes simpler.
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

I think fend bug is impossible to fix. I mean, it would require gigantic resources to fix it. The same bug was with zeal - and they never fixed it I think; they just changed the number of hits, right? Or did they fix it.

Anyway, I dont like this patch; it broke hammerdins (Im still not sure by how much), it broke lightning sorcs; it only buffed whirlwind barbs.

I wonder what the uber quest will be - someone has to collect the 4 bottles.

Respecing will be possible in classic (I think) - Ive did the den of evil quest (but in LOD) and it gives the respec.

From the classic point of view, the game will be seriously broken - hammerdins become less useful and WW barbs become kings of duels, with even more damage and no IM.
The game also becomes simpler.

How did it buff WW barbs? Most of the barbs have life/mana small charms ( I got over 900 mana with 2 x ravens ). And only 10% more Deadly strike, you won't really notice it.

But seriously, the mana costs of WW was way too high. If you ever played a WW barb, you'd go nuts how much mana WW requires. It was really needed.


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

let me quote the original thread started by blizzard in regards to this new patch...


If you were to get an advance look at the patch notes for Diablo II 1.13, what is the one patch note you would want to see?

Our goal is to get an overall sense of the single most important request from every member of the community. We want as many posts as we can get for the largest cross section, so if you have friends who used to play Diablo II or just don’t frequent the forums as much as you do, let them know this is here so we can get their “#1 patch note” too.

Please be mindful that we’re not going to be able to make every change mentioned, but hopefully with your feedback we can prioritize and do our best to cover as much as possible.


Somehow I can't really imagine most of these changes being #1 top requests..

- golems are still a waste of more than 1 skillpoint
- Hammerdins are still the most powerful wavekillers with ridiculous ease (ohhh they cant kill wave 2... what horror)
- Poison Vipers can still 1-hit-kill a 60-minion necromancer team, bug not fixed
- Anya bug is not fixed


I am pleased with the removal of IM from casters and the buffing of a hydra sorc, but thats about it. Aside of only tiny nerfs and buffs were made, and technical improvements that I never even heard about (widescreen users should be happy, why?).

I really hope blizzard will add a bit more content, since I am almost outraged that this all took them 8 months. That would be ridiculous since the majority of this seems to be merely a case of changing a single number in skilltrees coding ¬¬
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

From the classic point of view, the game will be seriously broken - hammerdins become less useful and WW barbs become kings of duels, with even more damage and no IM.
The game also becomes simpler.

what you just said, ww barbs taken over in CS with they cruel weapons.

hammer din still *** in pvp, over powered as usual. nothing interesting been added, but think of this: when you click off screen, d2 doesnt minimize any more :O

but i like hydra's now. more effective. couple of skills been fixed, kewl. lighting sorc is dead without awesome gear ( so now i ll have to have light skillers to do some dmg ) and yes, game sucks as usaul. at least lvl 99 duel are quite fun.

i wonna get to hell and see new champ boss, atm i am in act 1 nm, and with realm down, i cant do any bug finding.


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

let me quote the original thread started by blizzard in regards to this new patch...





Somehow I can't really imagine most of these changes being #1 top requests..

- golems are still a waste of more than 1 skillpoint
- Hammerdins are still the most powerful wavekillers with ridiculous ease (ohhh they cant kill wave 2... what horror)
- Poison Vipers can still 1-hit-kill a 60-minion necromancer team, bug not fixed
- Anya bug is not fixed


I am pleased with the removal of IM from casters and the buffing of a hydra sorc, but thats about it. Aside of only tiny nerfs and buffs were made, and technical improvements that I never even heard about (widescreen users should be happy, why?).

I really hope blizzard will add a bit more content, since I am almost outraged that this all took them 8 months. That would be ridiculous since the majority of this seems to be merely a case of changing a single number in skilltrees coding ¬¬

If I'm reading it correctly the drawing engine was modified to handle scaling. If true, it's a bit of work... I'm happy for it, but not sure why this was done instead of bug fixes.

To anyone complaining about the increased drop rate for runes? At least they didn't lower it.

I'm happy for whatever I get. I'm not as hardcore as some of you, but the window focus bug annoyed the living hell out of me. Getting the ability to have a larger window is nice as well.

At this point, ten years in, I'll just appreciate whatever I receive. Thanks Blizzard.


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

let me quote the original thread started by blizzard in regards to this new patch...





Somehow I can't really imagine most of these changes being #1 top requests..

- golems are still a waste of more than 1 skillpoint
- Hammerdins are still the most powerful wavekillers with ridiculous ease (ohhh they cant kill wave 2... what horror)
- Poison Vipers can still 1-hit-kill a 60-minion necromancer team, bug not fixed
- Anya bug is not fixed


I am pleased with the removal of IM from casters and the buffing of a hydra sorc, but thats about it. Aside of only tiny nerfs and buffs were made, and technical improvements that I never even heard about (widescreen users should be happy, why?).

I really hope blizzard will add a bit more content, since I am almost outraged that this all took them 8 months. That would be ridiculous since the majority of this seems to be merely a case of changing a single number in skilltrees coding ¬¬

Show me a hammerdin that can kill as fast as a javazon? :whistling:


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Show me a hammerdin that can kill as fast as a javazon? :whistling:

you really want me to?

cs run: zon is slower then then din
boss runs: pala will be there before zon gets to wp
baal runs: hammer field....
rushing some one: fcr table?...
general pvm: hammerdin...

note: i like zons, but hammer dins are over powered, with MB and HS for tons of block and def, what more do you need?


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

you really want me to?

cs run: zon is slower then then din
boss runs: pala will be there before zon gets to wp
baal runs: hammer field....
rushing some one: fcr table?...
general pvm: hammerdin...

note: i like zons, but hammer dins are over powered, with MB and HS for tons of block and def, what more do you need?

But a hammerdin doesn't do as much damage like a javazon. Especially when killing baal at 8 players :P


 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Well-equipped Javas do kill both bosses (except ubers) and many Baal waves faster than hdins... Obviously the fcr bps make them a worse all-rounder regardless but Timmy never contested that.

A decent proportion of the defensive effects of Holy Shield could definitely get transferred into synergies from fanaticism or zeal though.

Direct bug fixes for things like Fend, inferno and Viper bug aren't realistic to expect. They could have implemented work-arounds instead though that have equivalent effect. For the first 2 that is, Viper is probably 'working as intended' as regards MP.

I agree from the d2c player's perspective especially this is all pretty WTF,. I really don't think classic was considered at all. Or PvP. Overall a very carebear, appeal to the lowest common denominator, approach to rebalancing.


Seriously, if they genuinely have prevented duping, D2 will be a very different game, and imo for the better. But why would they possibly need to nerf LM if infinity's become nearly unheard of? Lightning is easily the weakest tree if you take away conviction.
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Personally I find this patch to be a failure. It offers absolutely nothing to those who have tired of the game. A ridiculous PR disaster of development now becomes a PR disaster of deployment in my opinion. Many aspects that people seemed to have wanted the most have been ignored. Many aspects that were just downright idiotic still exist.

Diablo Clone - Well here we could finally have thought of something to do with those useless SOHs. Why were these SOHs even introduced?

Content - What new content? New items, quests, monsters, runewords, areas, etc? What exactly could be of interest to draw someone back into this game?

Does anyone think that a minor increase, and I mean minor, of high runes is going to suddenly introduce a realm of legitimate high runes? So they fixed one exploit to duping...big freaking deal, since there already exists multiple methods.

Will I still log in to find that all anyone is doing are endless Baal runs? At least bring back the freaking Cow games. They are still fun, somewhat, but good luck finding them now as nobody cares to do them.

The rest of the patch seems to be really minor tweaks that in no way should have ever warranted this long of a development. They were right about one thing, and that is after such a long PR disaster nobody would be satisfied. Well, I think many would have been dissatisfied anyways had this been released in April of last year
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

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…

Anticlimactic. The game is going on 10 years old. This patch did not significantly change any
skills. A guide for every possible build is on the internet. And, Akara has already given us
THREE respecs. No one will ever need more than one to correct a mistake, a fourth is silly.

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

Nice, but the dupe bug should have been fixed way back when 1.10 was released.

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.

Nice, the window issues have annoyed me going on 10 years. It's about time someone took 5
minutes to fix the problems.

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.

Nice for those who wanted the feature.

- Increased the drop rate of high runes.

Nice, but why did you even bother. The rarity of the upper high runes was in the neighborhood of
having to win the lottery 3 or more times over. The pathetic 3x increase still means high rune rarity
is in the neighborhood of having to win the lottery.

- Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).

Nice.

- Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.

Nice, but the runes should have had their own color from day 1.

- Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.

Why was this even looked at. It is a completely pointless change, especially since the level-
bound cap still exists on your inventory/belt.

- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.

Why? These were one of the few challenging enemies in the game. They forced you to pay
attention and have resistance. Having said this, before this nerf, with the proper gear, one could turn these into battlefield, insta-heal medics. So the reality is, they were only a threat if you
were stupid.

With the nerf these are now a joke. Being able to take on a throne room of these with only 20% lightning resistance, is a joke is it not?

- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.

Nice

- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

Nice, this needed balanced as being insta-killed with when having 200% life (full life + BO) is BS.

- Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal’s summoned minions no longer give experience.

Good, Uber leveling needed to go.

- Removed Oblivion Knight’s Iron Maiden curse.

Good, this curse was BS.

- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.

This is not what needed to be done. The effect needed to be removed from the charm.

- Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.

Nice, if you care.

- Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.

No comment.

- 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.

Nice, if you care.

- 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.

Same "windowing" comments I made back up top.

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%.

I can admit the damage is low, but ultimately this is not what the skill needs. The skill needs
the cooldown timer removed.

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

Pointless change.

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

That's it? Are you kidding me. BS. The Barbarian is supposed to be the master of melee combat
and is out done in this regard by just about every other class in the game. Whirlwind needs does
not need a mana cost reduction it needs a damage boost, either outright or by synergy. And what
about the the throwing skills?


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

This change was definitely needed, but the damage also needs to be reduced. Either cut the Vigor
and Blessed Aim synergy bonuses in half or remove the Concentration bug. Yes, Concentration
boosting the Hammer damage is a bug. It was never intended to boost Hammer damage. In fact,
Blizzard fixed the bug once, but then restored it at 50% effectiveness due to all the ensuing whining. But all of this was before synergies and I have no doubt that when Hu implemented the
synergies he overlooked the fact that Concentration boosted Hammer damage.

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.

Nice.

Necromancer
-Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).

Nice

-Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.

Why? The skill was perfectly balanced.

-Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.

Nice

Sorceress
-Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.

Oh yes, people will pump Inferno to boost Firewall damage just as they pump Ice Bolt to boost Frozen Orb, except they will be half as likely to do so.

-Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of Firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.

No comment

-Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.
-Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.
-Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.

Nice. We might actually see some Hyda sorcs

-Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

This was not needed. The damage output of the Lightning tree is pathetic compared to Fire and Cold. Lightning is only good when every single skill point is dumped into the Lightning tree and
the char is equipped with the best possible gear in the game. And even then it's not that great until the Infinity runeword is added to the mix. Without the Infinity you are screwed. Your a one trick pony with Lightning immunes everywhere.

Where are the rest of the patch notes?

Seriously, where are the rest of the patch notes. The notes that address all the broken skills, the removal of the game-breaking runewords, the new synergies to all the current underwhelming, never used skills, and game balance.

This patch is pathetic. 90% of what is noted in the 1.13 patch notes could have been accomplished in ONE HOUR by sitting down in front of the spreadsheet(s) and adjusting the variables. This ease of change is the legacy of Peter Hu.
 
Re: 1.13 PTR is UP

Perfectly summarized, Galtrovan. But there is still a chance, that after this "beta testing" there will be released serious full-featured patch 1.13. I still hope for it.
 
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