One of the talks I was looking forward to the most at BlizzCon 2014 was the preview of the upcoming patch 2.1.2 changes. On Thursday night, I had the chance to meet with the Diablo 3 team, but I purposefully avoided asking anything about future content patches as I figured everything would be addressed here (or most of what’s been done). This blog will try to highlight some of the major things to look forward to as well as talking about my own experience with the demo machines they setup at the convention.
Since patch 2.1, I feel that Diablo 3 has made quite a bit of progress in becoming a very well structured game. There’s always going to be some level of hits and misses, but compared to the original release, I truly believe the game now sits at a point where the foundation is solid and something that can be built upon. Patch 2.1.2 starts to build upon the foundation. From the looks of it (and the version number), the patch will not be a huge content patch but a fairly reasonable sized one that will probably include Season 2. There’s a lot of people still clamoring over the desire for PVP, but I think Blizzard’s focus for the moment is really making the seasonal and rift/greater rift aspects far more solid.
In terms of Greater Rifts, the main two issues that they will try to address are 1) mob density; 2) pylons. Right now, depending on your rift, you can either get extremely empty hallways or the more ideal zombie style rifts that allow you to quickly reach the Rift Guardian. Some of the more successful players ended up finding rifts that allowed them to succeed much faster. In the case of Pylons similar to zombie rifts, the Conduit Pylon has often times been cited to be the determining factor in defeating a particularly difficult rift boss. To compensate going forward, they hope to make other types of pylons more compelling with more abilities as well as introducing more pylons into rifts with these new abilities.
Smaller but equally important in the scheme of things are 1) maze layouts; 2) death penalties; and 3) the re-evaluation of all rift bosses. The main example of improving the maze layouts is to find the (literally) non-linear style corridors. I’m not sure if that entails providing more randomized layouts overall but it should improve the variety a bit. Death penalties will be handled on an increasing timer basis as opposed to forcing players to run back. The main idea here is the issue of where a player can die in an instance vs the length of time of returning to their position. They still want a penalty but the motive now becomes forcing players to avoid repeating mistakes as opposed to doing lengthy corpse runs. Finally, they will be taking a look at all rift bosses and possibly toning down act 4 and 5 monsters as those tend to be off balance in comparison to the far higher rewarding yet dull zombie mobs.
Item-wise, they will be introducing two new legendary gems, both of which are defensive. One is a damage reduction gem while the other provides high amounts of healing. The general thought is that they want to vary up the gem usage a bit and possibly allow people (especially those soloing) to go for non-unity specific builds. The defense gem definitely will help quite a bit, especially as you start hitting really high rift levels and require more protection to avoid getting one shot so easily.
Another major feature to look forward to is Ancient Items. Ancient Items are roughly between 20-30% better stat-wise compared to their normal counterparts. The example they provided was the Maximus. The main premise here is to target players who manage to maximize their gear and no longer have something to progress for in terms of big changes in their gear. Ancient Items will have a lower drop rate but obviously a huge upside (I guess they remind me of a super charged up Warforged item from World of Warcraft). I think one obvious ramification is that people who manage to farm out a good deal of Ancient Items will be able to hit even higher Greater Rift levels. Now, I’m not sure if these Ancient Items will be applied to all items (including set bonuses), but just finding something like a Furnace with level reduction can additionally change how you level a toon.
Next, another thing to check out are revamped items. The Wormwood staff was one of the main examples. Here, they added +% poison damage as well as Locust Swarm. I believe now what happens is that the Wormwood staff itself provides a passive AoE effect. So instead of going through the typical rotation of Haunt -> expensive Locust Swarm -> Soul Harvest, you can just concentrate on the Haunt + Soul Harvest aspect, freeing up a slot on your action bar. The demo machines had this setup so I got to try it out. One of the hopes that Wyatt Cheng mentioned was not simply providing a utility exclusively for Jade Harvester witch doctors but other witch doctor builds as well.
Other major items are some new sets, including one for Barbarians, Wizards and Demon Hunters as well as reworking ones like the Sunwuko and Raiment of 1000 Storms. Once again, I had the opportunity to check these out and will comment on that part a bit later. They are recycling older gear, but I believe the overall goal here is to be economical as well as making every legendary item useful in some way. One thing I discussed with Wyatt Cheng is the idea that no legendary should be bad and he completely agrees. So perhaps in the next iteration of patch 2.1.2, we will continue to see the refactoring of various legendaries that currently do not have a meaningful purpose and convert them into something incredibly worthwhile and game changing.
Monster-wise, we definitely will be get some new monsters. For myself, one thing I’m really looking forward to are the new goblins. The three new goblins being introduced are the Gem Hoarder, Odious Collector and (my personal favorite) the Blood Thief. They will be far more distinct in terms of coloring as opposed to “just the pants” (as Josh might’ve mentioned). The Gem Hoarder, as its name implies, drops gems while the Odious Collector drops crafting materials and plans. But the big one for me is the Blood Thief, which will drop Blood Shards. One thing I noticed on the demo is that the Blood Thief can be encountered in a Greater Rift and will drop blood shards. The best effect is just seeing the massive amount of shards the Blood Thief will drop after sticking him. They did mention that Goblins will have sneakier AI in trying to lure people into mobs so that part should make the game a little more interesting.
On top of that, we will be getting a few new mobs as well as a new rift guardian in the form of the Rat King. These seem to be part of the new area inspired from the intro movie from Diablo 2’s expansion pack. Since the demo machines only had the difficulty set at level 15 for the Greater Rift, I didn’t feel the danger of the environment nor new monsters as compared to say level 35+. There are traps that compliment the peril of the new monsters such as the guillotine and spike traps.
Another modification are a few achievements. To be honest here, I didn’t really pay as much attention to this part compared to the other features discussed (mostly because I’m not a huge achievement nut).
One thing that felt lacking was attention to Clans. At the moment, Clans don’t have as huge of a purpose in terms of a feature set. I think they felt that they learned about how guild leveling in World of Warcraft ended up not being what everyone had hoped. However, it is a subject on their radar and it’s something I hope that gets discussed in the near future. For my own clan, we don’t do much and very few people log on beyond myself and maybe 2-3 others consistently. I definitely hope that in the future we see more social features that can come from clans like special events, group play or even progressive bonuses for those who stick around (kinda like service awards given to employees for long terms).
Now, I want to talk about the game play from the demos. I managed to get in later that night and there were quite a few machines up. So there was no competition, no wait and I could play as long as I wanted. That provided me with ample time to give all 6 classes a try and experience the new content both in solo and group mode.
My first class of choice was the Demon Hunter. The Demon Hunter provided had an all new set which plays off of Discipline and Multishot. I don’t remember which weapon was provided but the play style works by increasing Discipline through Hate generators. You get some passive defense for enemies within close range and increase damage output with generators and Multishot with maximum Discipline. I do believe that they had Preparation keyed up on the action bar. I don’t remember the passives used, but I did have Multishot, Companion/Boar, Vault and Vengeance. The build felt closer to one of the earlier Cluster Arrow builds, except swapping Multishot and having the Boar out. You essentially wreck things and have pretty good defensive with the Discipline. Wyatt Chang said that they do not intend to change M6 but they want to Demon Hunters shooting again. I think this setup should be quite interesting, especially since Vengeance took a backseat. Add a new Legendary defensive gem to the mix and you can probably take on pretty solid Greater Rifts.
The other class I eagerly wanted to try was the Wizard. Frost Wizards are back and I say that I’ve really missed them! The new Wizard set centers around Slow Time where rather than just being a defensive, it also gives you offensive capabilities in essentially creating an AoE effect. So now you can control creatures with a variety of slowing effects but damage them at the same time. Honestly, I like the play style a LOT MORE than the Firebird set. Hopefully, both will remain viable as very high end builds but serve different purposes.
Next I gave the Crusader a spin. The one provided still has the Akkhan’s set and the Unrelenting Phalanx shield. But the big thing I believe was the weapon that made Bombardment into a passive cooldown effect. I forget how it triggered but the game play essentially was keeping Akarat’s Champion up, tossing a few Phalanx Stampedes out then periodically blowing things up with Bombardment both just by hitting things and with the ability on the action slot. You pretty much wrecked the place quickly. They did provide Justice as a generator and I’m not sure if this ability triggered anything with an item. But it’s good to see Bombardment back. Highly undervalued ability.
Another major comeback is the Whirlwind Barbarian. How did they fix it? With a new set! The new set works in conjunction with Rend. So the play style goes like apply rend then start lawnmowering your enemies down. It does take a little time to get used to but it was awesome seeing Whirldwind returning. I’m honestly not a huge fan of the Raekor build play style. I managed to get my own build/gear to the point where I can handle T4 without any issues solo. But it can get awkward and feels experimental. I like the idea but high end game play just requires so much specific gear, cooldown reduction, and high level gemming as well as removing generators. So when Furious Charge is on cooldown, you have to book for a while, which can result in a huge penalty with an off step. I think Whirlwind barbarians just are a little more intuitive and the addition of rend also can provide a great deal of healing with the right passives, giving the barbarians much needed survivability and natural game play.
Then I gave the Witch Doctor a spin. Once again, the game play was the Jade Harvester DoT-Nuke build. But the Wormwood passive made things a lot easier in automatically applying the debuff. This could mean a lot in saving the witch doctor mana in critical situations since most tend to go with Grave Injustice for gaining mana back quickly. I feel that this weapon essentially will end up becoming the Jade Harvest BiS weapon, especially if someone picks up an Ancient version.
Last but not least was the Monk. I did use the Sunwuko build but the talent bar was slightly different. I kinda wish they would’ve provided the Rainment set instead just to try that build out. I didn’t feel things were as remarkable compared to the other builds. But by this point I was in group play so things just got wasted around me with the other crusaders in the party.
Overall, I can’t wait for the next patch to come out. I might actually give the current season a try after all just for the new transmog. I have no idea what to take and might simply do a monk or crusader since I need two more spots to fill. Either that or I might create another Demon Hunter since I’m very familiar with the play style. They didn’t really mention any specific dates for the next seasons so I’m guessing it’ll be at least 1-2 more months away, especially when they stated how Blizzard will notify everyone when the season will end 1 month ahead. Anyway, good times, hope to post some pictures up sometime.
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