Diablo III Patch 1.0.3

Blizzard recently posted a list of upcoming changes to Diablo III. They're addressing a lot of the issues I've had thus far. In particular:

Current Act 2 Inferno gear is going to start dropping, sporadically, in Act 3/4 Hell and Act 1 Inferno. The very top gear is going to start dropping in Act 1 Inferno. This will remove the current absolute requirement to buy gear on the AH when you reach endgame. They're going to make the bets stuff drop more often in the higher difficulties so you will still be rewarded for being able to legitimately beat the toughest stuff. I have a feeling your best bet is going to be farming Act 1 Inferno now, but...

They're going to nerf Act 2, 3, and 4 Inferno. They're going to be lowering damage and health to make it more of a difficulty ramp than a giant set of difficulty stairs. There can certainly be numbers chosen where it will make sense to farm higher difficulties for the increased top gear drop rate. For now my plan is certainly to focus on MF gear in order to farm Act 1 Inferno after the patch.

They're destroying the combine costs for the blacksmith and jeweler. They didn't post any details about blacksmithing but the jeweler is having the gold cost reduced by a factor of 200. Yeah, that's quite the nerf. They're also cutting the number of gems needed to 2 from 3. I don't think that change is needed (gems are dirt cheap as it is and it did feel like you found a reasonable progression of gems with the 3-for-1 crushing) but I think it's a lot better for the crafters to be too cheap than too expensive. As someone who used to pick up all chipped gems and all runes in Diablo II in order to crush them together I really like that crushing might make sense.

They're removing the damage scaling from grouping! This is totally excellent! As it currently stands I shudder when someone joins my game. The monsters do more damage and my quasi-tank NPC helper disappears. If the person joining my game isn't able to tank we're probably screwed. Removing that damage multiplier makes everything that much smoother. With that change I'll be happy with any number of people joining my games and might even feel comfortable joining other people.

They mentioned in passing looking into how attack speed impacts spell costs. Also nerfing attack speed since it's the best thing right now.


The only big thing they didn't mention at all that I'm really annoyed with is the lack of guild support. I had an awesome item drop yesterday and I really would have liked to link it to a bunch of people at once. Also I still want to start a hardcore group up at some point and it would be a lot easier to put that together with a guild system. Or even just the ability to create a chat room!