Wow I can't wait to see what people have to say about this. Get hyped folks, It looks mostly good to me! First content patch in over a DECADE. If you're not excited then you aren't even ALIVE.
Can't wait to try out the changes. Builds I'm going to be building to check it out:
- Spearzon - big buffs?
- Elemental Bowzon - half mana cost for the big ones, fire skills got damage buffs
- Regular Bowzon - Strafe got 25% more damage, magic arrow got a somewhat vague buff (?) and its single target was already very strong, and was already a strong option for dealing with physical immunities.
- Any zon - avoid/dodge no longer really interrupt as you can cast and attack to interrupt those animations, huge buff
- Martial Arts Sin - 1 charge used per finishing move, damage buffs, telekick assassin unlocked XD
- Bladesin - very interested to see how these buffs will play out in game, will be making one
- Leap attack Barb - YES! Looks so beefy now, and moves faster. Sick.
- Warcry barb - 30% damage increase
- Shape shifter - interested to see how these attack speed changes are? Someone explain to me the impact here? I'm struggling to understand the impact. Off weapon IAS will apply now, but attacks while shifted were generally balanced with only weapon ias in mind.. soo will it be worse? I'm digging through ias tables trying to parse it out and coming up short. At any rate, definitely trying out fireclaw.
- Fire elemental druid - huge buffs.
- Summoning druid - This might be a first character for me. These changes look so cool. Just scrolling through the list of changes here makes my mind spin with item options and ideas. Ravenlore raven build?!
- Holy Fire Pally - Here we go boys my auradin just got sick as hell. "Damage level scaling increased by 90%" Synergies increased by 6% and 4% per level.. and 200% damage at close range. This is such a massive change.
Nothing really too exciting for necro? Like small buffs except skeleton mage which got big buffs.
Mercs - not really excited for anything with the mercs. Still going to be using act 2 mercs on pretty much everything unless there's something I missed. I'm glad my faith wielding a1 merc is getting a buff and can now use freezing arrow, that's pretty sick. I'll definitely be trying out act 3 mercs because they're so cool, I don't know if the buffs will justify the loss of character power by skipping auras from a2 mercs but it certainly looks like it will be fun to play with.
Runeword "Obsession" is the only one that wasn't announced before patch notes, it's a beefy staff. Haven't done any calculations but it's a big staff. Obviously staves can spawn with skills on them so this could be really fun to use if you get an insane staff base. Comparing to HotO/spirit setup, it has about same resists, 10 less cast speed (sad), 1 less skill, buuut you get increased max life and whatever skills you can get on a staff base, so it could be up to +7 of your main skill instead of +5. Also indestructible since it requires zod, so it can be a very classy eth staff as well, pretty stylish.
Upgrading sets - finally I can upgrade Death's sash and have more potions, rejoice. Other than that I can't think of any set that this really helps though in any practical sense. Like all of the normal/exceptional weapons have no or barely any %ed so they don't really benefit (hwanin's justice would benefit but upgraded has a 210 str requirement... no thanks) Aldurs will get slightly more damage but even this is pretty lackluster, unless you're going to like slap some ohms in there or something
Meaning that Death's Sash is the one true winner here!!
Set buffs - looks pretty meh, maybe there's something I'm missing there.
Area level changes - so sick. I wanna comb through the files and see what areas have what density of boss packs and start thinking about this more. Some places are cool that they're 85, but wouldn't be better farming locations due to low monster density like Abaddon and pit of Acheron, there's just no monsters in there. Same with drifter cavern and icy cellar right? They're so small. Stony tomb is nice because it can spawn right outside town, has decent density, and fire players can farm there without worrying about immunities. Swampy pit is a no from me dog, that place has nasty monsters. Sewers level 1 is pretty big and obviously very close. Might be a good spot.
Overall, I couldn't be more pleased (except no multishot buff
). Power creep to the max though, lots of stuff getting stronger generally, and not everything that got buffs needed them. I'm thinking some things are going to end up being really OP and slip through the PTR cracks. Changes to Paladin damage auras are so much that I think they're going to get walked back a bit before it goes live. Other than that, I don't see any "Infinity" level changes where the meta is going to be shifted by 1 single thing entirely.
But yes! I am maybe more excited about this patch than I was about the release of D2R in the first place, as there's more stuff to do now!!
Edit: insight in bows is exciting, but only partially because you can put it on an act 1 merc. I'm really excited because low level bow options are lackluster. Insight is big damage, at level 27 you can wear it yourself and absolutely destroy everything and solve your mana problems, and it's cheap to boot. There's nothing even close at that level damage wise.
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