Blizzard provided Updated Diablo 3 Patch 2.1 Notes for the PTR over the weekend to reflect changes in the newest patch. We covered all the skill changes in a skill comparison datamining post late last week, but the notes codify and centralize a lot of the miscellaneous changes (buffed 2H weapons, salvage all, [wiki]Ramaladni’s Gift[/wiki] bugs, etc) that have been mentioned in recent blue posts.
Here is the newly-added stuff of note:
[blue]
General
Healing
Ramaladni’s Gift
Bug Fixes
User Interface
General
Items
The base damage range of all two-handed melee weapons has been increased by approximately 23-26% depending on the speed of the weapon, with slower weapons receiving a slightly higher increase
Items
[wiki]Leoric’s Crown[/wiki]
[wiki]The Swami[/wiki]
Achievements: Bug Fixes
CRAFTING
Blacksmith
[source]http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14569138/patch-210-ptr-patch-notes-updated-july-9-7-18-2014[/source][/blue]
Do you realize that [wiki]Life on Hit[/wiki] and [wiki]Regeneration[/wiki] have been boosted 5x from their initial Paragon 2.0 value? LoH was 16.5 and it’s up to 82.5 per point. Regen was 33 and it’s now 165.1 per point.
Varying Socket Values?
Interesting legendary property on [wiki]Leoric’s Crown[/wiki] (db), with 75-100% more bonus from socketed gems. First of all, that helm does NOT get a socket as an inherent bonus, which should probably be changed if the legendary affix only works with one. Secondly, that change doesn’t include [wiki]Legendary Gems[/wiki] which can’t be put into helms. That aside, is doubling your gem bonus (up to +46% Life, 23% faster cooldown, or +82% MF/GF/EXP) going to influence your helm decision? Probably not much at the high end, especially since practically all the Torment-only sets include [wiki]Legendary Helms[/wiki] and many players are locked into one for their gear/build. But it’s a nice bonus that gives that particular hat some variety and uniqueness from all the rest.
It also brings up a topic I was debating with people some months ago. What if the power of sockets in items in D3 were variable? Say every socketed item had from 75-150% gem bonus, and it worked just like it sounded; gems socketed into that item would grant 75-150% of their listed stat.
My initial idea was to use this to ameliorate the issue of items that *must* have a socket to be viable. So give all weapons a socket, but there’s still RNG in terms of how powerful that socket is. Obviously you’d want a 150% socket rather than a 75% socket, but even if you got a lower roll, at least the weapon wouldn’t be useless, as non-socketed weapons are today. And if 75-150% is too much spread, make it like 80-120%. And of course there’d be some set or other item bonuses that could boost the socket% value for a given slot or for all of your slots, or you could enchant the socket value along with the # of sockets, etc.
I had those conversations long before the [wiki]Gift of Ramalandi[/wiki] came along as Blizzard’s solution to the “must have a socket or it’s crap” issue, and hadn’t thought of the topic for a while, but it’ll be interesting to see if Leoric’s Crown and that new legendary affix is a sign of things to come. Imagine that +75-100% socket bonus as an item set bonus that applied to every piece of armor you were wearing… would want?