Diablo 3: Making Paragon More Interesting

Paragon levels have come a long way since its original implementation in response to making endgame play more rewarding. While it is nice to gain points that can be allocated into free stats of your choice, the static stats gained seem to be a rather bland usage of Paragon points that will eventually boil down to spending Paragon points into one's primary attribute (STR, DEX, INT) or Vitality. To put it another way, endgame character progression in terms of Paragon is largely uninteresting because the player levels up, gains a point, and spends it on stats. Why not spice it up a bit?

After a long discussion with a friend on this topic and some thinking, I have come up with a possible method of making Paragon leveling more interesting and rewarding, particularly when it comes to the facet of RPG-style character development and customization that some players complain Diablo 3 lacks (though it can be argued that the various ways a player can build their character in terms of Active and Passive skills is customization). This system is called Nephalem Prowess.

What is Nephalem Prowess and how does it work? Nephalem Prowess uses a talent tree style design to allow a player to greatly improve their character, making Paragon farming rewarding. At level 60, the player gains a prowess point to spend. Every 25 Paragon levels grants another prowess point. To advance to the next tier in the prowess tree, 4 points must be spent in the tier. This means that by the 5th tier, a player is Paragon level 500. To max out the entire tree, a player has to reach 1550 Paragon. Additional tiers can be added later on.

Here is an example of some Nephalem Prowess effects players can acquire:

"NEUTRAL PROWESS"

This entire picture is a placeholder image to better display how a Prowess tree would look like. All image assets belong to Blizzard Entertainment. Effects are presented in a left to right format.

TIER ONE (12 POINTS, 4 EFFECTS)

• Health From Wealth (4 points): Picking up gold heals you by an amount equal to 12.5/25/37.5/50% of base gold value picked up. This effect is amplified by gold find from items and Paragon, but not from difficulty.
• Nephalem Endurance (2 points): Nephalem Glory lasts an additional 15/30 seconds. Health globes collected increase the duration of Nephalem Glory by an additional 2.5/5 seconds.
• Nephalem Strength (2 points): Increases your damage when affected by Nephalem Glory by 5/10%.
• Enhanced Learning (4 points): Increases experience gain by 5/10/15/20% (multiplies with all other effects).

TIER TWO (12 POINTS, 3 EFFECTS)

• Material Gain (4 points): Crafting materials have a 15/30/45/60% increased chance of dropping (multiplicative). Drop rates can be increased over 100% (causing the value to overflow and potential cause additional crafting materials to drop. For instance, if the base drop chance is 100%, then with 4 points in Material Gain, there is now also a 60% chance for a second piece of that crafting material to drop).
• Might of Birthright (4 points), Requires Nephalem Endurance, Nephalem Strength: When enemies drop a Health Globe, they have a 7/14/21/28% chance of dropping a Power Globe as well. In addition, while affected by Nephalem Glory, resource generation is increased by 1.5/3/4.5/6% per stack.
• Expert Adventurer (4 points): Increases experience gain from quests and bounties by 7.5/15/22.5/30% (includes rift closure, etc). Increases the amount of rested experience granted by Pools of Reflection by 25/50/75/100%.

TIER THREE (12 POINTS, 4 EFFECTS)

• Touch of Life (3 points): Increases the radius of your Health Globe and Gold pickup by 2/4/6 yards. In addition, healing effects on you are 7/14/21% more effective.
• Blessing of the Ancients (1 point): Increases all your attributes by 5%.
• Broad Coverage (4 points): Increases the chance for Area Damage to apply by 5/10/15/20%. Increases the radius of Area Damage by 1.5/3/4.5/6 yards.
• Master the Enemy (4 points): Reduces damage taken by enemy modifiers by 2.5/5/7.5/10%. In addition, basic enemies grant 12.5/25/37.5/50% more experience.

TIER FOUR (12 POINTS, 5 EFFECTS)

• For the Hoard! (2 points): Guaranteed loot drops (such as Elites, Champions, Uniques, and Chests) have a 12.5/25% chance of dropping an additional item.
• The Glitter of Gold (2 points): Increases the price of items sold to the vendor by 25/50% plus an additional 5/10% of your Bonus Gold Find (from equipment and Paragon only, not difficulty increases). This effect is quadrupled for Legendary items sold.
• Rites of the Nephalem (4 points): Increases the duration of all shrine effects by 25/50/75/100%. In addition, shrines also have a 25/50/75/100% chance of granting Nephalem Glory.
• Expedient (2 points): Increases your movement speed by 2.5/5%. Increases your base movement speed cap by 5/10%.
• Lucidity (2 points): Reduces the cooldown of your follower’s skills by 10/20%. In addition, your cooldown and resource costs are reduced by 1/2%.

TIER FIVE (3 POINTS, 3 EFFECTS)

• Nephalem Prosperity (1 point), Requires For the Hoard!, The Glitter of Gold: Guaranteed loot drops (such as Elites, Champions, Uniques, and Chests) have a 25% chance of dropping another additional item. In addition, the gold price of all NPC services (vendor, repair, crafting, etc) is reduced by 10%.
• True Revelation (1 point), Requires Rites of the Nephalem: Nephalem Glory now deals all types of elemental damage and can stack an additional time (this effect applies to party members), granting more effects:
• Level 4 (Nephalem Glory): Attacks have a chance of firing multiple rays of energy from the sky down on nearby enemies (within a screen length or so) with each of the five rays dealing 200% weapon damage as all elements. Damage taken is reduced by 15%.
• Total Mastery (1 point), Requires Expedient, Lucidity: Increases your movement speed by an additional 5% and your follower gains access to their 5th skill. In addition, you gain an aura that increases the attributes of your party members within 200 yards by 2.5% (does not stack).
• Templar: Bringer of Justice (60 second cooldown): The Templar smashes the ground, pulling in enemies within 20 yards, dealing 250% weapon damage as Physical, rooting them in place, and taunting them for 3 seconds. In addition, the Templar’s damage dealt is increased by 30% and his damage taken is reduced by 75% for 12 seconds.
• Scoundrel: Arrow Barrage (40 second cooldown): The Scoundrel swiftly fires 10 arrows that deal 150% weapon damage as Physical each. Each shot applies the effect of Crippling Shot and/or Poison Bolts, depending on the skill the Scoundrel has learned (applies both if the Scoundrel has access to both). The Scoundrel’s attacks reduce the cooldown of Arrow Storm by 0.5 seconds.
• Enchantress: Arcane Illusions (60 second cooldown): The Enchantress summons two magical clones of herself that can use Charm and/or Forceful Push and attack at 50% effectiveness. When the effect ends, the clones explode, dealing 200% weapon damage as Arcane to enemies within 10 yards. Each clone has a 50% chance of leaving a Health Globe. While the clones are active, the Enchantress is immune to all enemy effects (damage, crowd control, etc).

In the end, while this Nephalem Prowess suggestion doesn't necessarily need to be in-game, making Paragon leveling more interesting would help make the endgame more rewarding, which is the reason the Paragon system was implemented to begin with.

Diablo 3: Let's Talk About the Mystic

Diablo 3's expansion, Reaper of Souls, added a few new pieces of content for players to sink their proverbial teeth into. On top of Act 5 and the new Adventure Mode that adds Bounties and Nephalem Rifts, which is effectively the endgame at the moment, a new artisan, the Mystic, was added to the game as well. While the vanity transmogrification, an innovation that made its way into World of Warcraft (which was originally from other games) and was likely brought to Diablo 3, has generally received little criticism, the Mystic's Enchanting has drawn a staggering amount of fire.

Enchanting allows a player to reroll a single stat on their gear at the cost of materials (gotten from Salvaging) and gold, with the gold price increasing on subsequent re-enchants (with no discernible cap). When a stat is rerolled only that stat can be rerolled on any additional attempts to enchant the item. Rerolling provides two new stats for the player to choose from all available rolls that the item can have at the time (for instance an item that already has Vitality cannot have Vitality twice so it's unavailable as a choice if the stat is not getting rerolled but other stats could potentially be rolled).

The Problems With Enchanting

While this is at least a method for smoothing out RNG by effectively reducing the amount of good primary stat rolls on an item by one to make them decent equipment, there is still a lot of frustration factor related to using the Enchanting Feature. While recent patches and hotfixes (such as the removal of gold costs for enchanting jewelry) helped make the Mystic's enchanting less frustrating, I feel even more could be done since there are a few issues (or at least what I consider issues or problematic), which I will briefly list here:

• The lack of a cap on the gold cost (except on rerolling Rings and Amulets) causes an exponential growth in terms of how much gold is used to reroll a given item. The price increase rate starts in some linear form and seems to increase at an exponential rate too, which only increases the exponential growth of gold sunk.

For an example of how ridiculous the price increase for rerolling can get can get, refer to the following images:

The price for each individual reroll seems to increase at varying linear rates. However...

The total gold spent on rerolls is a clear exponential growth. Scary!

The final result of over 6 million gold of rerolling.

As you can see, the exponential growth of the gold cost is incredibly punishing.

• Certain items have a staggering amount of reroll options that two options per reroll can't even remotely cover even after numerous rerolls. Quivers, Mojos, and Sources can roll +% skill damage on nearly every skill of the class that can use that item, for instance. For an example of how many stats such an item can reroll, refer to the image below:

Items like quivers have so many reroll options that I needed to edit in the additional options.

• Sometimes a player may be interested in rerolling a stat to obtain a higher version of the stat to only end up rolling a lower version of the stat multiple times. While I understand perfect items are intended to be rather tough to get, an item that has one perfect stat roll is probably not going to massively increase the rate of character progression not to mention the player has to actually roll that stat to begin with (which could take many rerolls anyways). This mostly applies to stats with large ranges like main stats (Dexterity, Intelligence, Strength, Vitality).
• The gem price to reroll jewelry is staggering and often will cost 900k gold (the price to craft the required gem from Marquis gems). Even though the price is static spending 900k gold to reroll a piece of gear each time can really cut into a player's funds (not to mention players have to gather Marquis/Imperial gems).

Suggestions

As one can see there is a good bit of evidence that using the Mystic can be frustrating and downright punishing. With that said, there are many ways to alleviate this while still making her into a bit of a resource sink to reroll equipment (as intended):

• Increase the number of available rerolls stat slots to give the player more options to choose from when rerolling (currently when rerolling new stats, each attempt returns two stats). This is the simplest and most straightforward way to provide a player more bang for their buck and reduces the impact of RNG by providing more chances at a desirable reroll.
• A variant on this is to have a number of reroll stat slots based on how many slots the piece of equipment it has. For instance, the aforementioned Quivers, Mojos, and Sources when attempting to roll +% skills would likely end up having many potential stats to roll and thus would need as many as five or six reroll stats per reroll in order to match rerolling other gear in terms of finding desirable stats. See example image below for more details.
• Another variant on this is to pay more materials (as in materials Salvaged from equipment) to get more reroll slots for that specific reroll. This allows players to save a little gold and potentially diversifies their options (especially if the changes to the Mystic in patch 2.0.5 were taken into consideration so that every reroll slot chose a different stat). It also allows players to use excess materials they may have on hand.
• Place a cap on the gold price to reroll (500k gold, for example). This will end the exponentially increasing prices to reroll equipment and make enchanting seem less punishing, though it will still be a little pricey to reroll. In addition, it would also be nice to reduce the price increment amount for each reroll since it has a tendency to spike randomly (refer to the chart above).
• On that note, changing the gem price for rerolling jewelry from Flawless Imperial to Imperial would change the amount of potential gold spent rerolling jewelry to around 600k per reroll (if the time spent to gather Marquis gems is not accounted for). Alternatively, remove the gem price entirely and have jewelry rerolling work like rerolling other gear.
• When rerolling a specific stat, it can only roll higher versions of that stat. This allows players to eventually get a higher stat for the specific stat they want, reducing the impact of RNG considering that players still have a good chance of rolling other stats while trying to get a perfect stat on the item.
• For instance, if a player tries to roll out of 499 Strength on an item that can roll up to 500 Strength, the item can only ever roll 500 Strength if it rerolls Strength.
• Allow players to choose a stat when rerolling as their desired stat. That stat has an increased chance to be rerolled with the chance increasing based on how many times the item was rerolled. This would work well in conjunction with the gold price cap to further reduce the punishment RNG can deal out.

Hopefully at the very least the Mystic will be looked into because, as mentioned before, having the reroll option is great but the punishing nature of the rerolling system is not so much.

(I feel obligated to say this every time - these suggestions may have shown up somewhere in some form. Some of these suggestions may have even been inspired by said similar suggestions.)

Why Are Battletags Disabled On Some Of Blizzard's Starter Editions?

While I don't write articles on Hearthstone or, for that matter, have any plans to in the near future, Hearthstone has finished its open beta and is now "released" (despite being available to play for everyone for the better part of 3 months). I could gripe about all the issues introduced with the release patch, nerfs to various cards, gameplay changes, and so on, but instead I would like to highlight a more general issue that's bother me for a rather long time.

In the distant past I once posted some suggestions to improve World of Warcraft's Starter Edition (which I will likely be writing once more in the near future). One of the suggestions was to allow usage of the Real ID/Battletag system (which I will now refer to as the Battletag system) if the account the Starter Edition was attached to could normally access the system due to having a full WoW account (with an active subscription), Starcraft 2, or Diablo 3. The implication of this suggestion (and the restrictions in place at the time) is that the Battletag system is a privilege for paying customers of Blizzard products. However, a few additions in the recent years threw this logic completely out of the window.

Based on the statements about Hearthstone above, the free-to-play card game from Blizzard makes extensive usage of the Battletag system. In fact, it is mandatory to create one to play the game at all. Given the fact the game is free to play and all Starter Editions are also effectively free-to-play, the consistency of Battletag usage should be the same across all of Blizzard's games at this point. Furthermore, Diablo 3's Starter Edition also requires Battletag creation and usage, which was a feature added close to two years ago (which caused a lot of inevitable soliciting over the Battletag system that has since died down since it was easy to ignore anyways). Finally, Heroes of the Storm, another free-to-play game from Blizzard, is likely to end up using the Battletag system as well.

To conclude, it would be great to see Battletags enabled across all games regardless of whether the player is using a Starter Edition or not (in this case, it would apply to the WoW and SC2 Starter Editions). It allows players to retain lines of communication with their friends without any unnecessarily hampering restrictions. In the case of WoW, where it's possible to directly add Battletags by right clicking character portraits, that feature can simply be restricted on Starter Edition accounts to prevent easy soliciting.

Diablo 3: My Thoughts On Patch 1.0.4

With what was seemingly no hope in sight, Diablo 3 rapidly became a game that I stopped playing. Even though I hadn't completed Inferno Mode, there wasn't exactly much endgame content. While I understand that for the Diablo series endgame wasn't a thing until content like Uber Tristram was released (and even then it wasn't much), but due to various factors, such as the Real Money Auction House, ladder resets are virtually impossible, requiring some sort of alternative to extend the lifespan of the game.

This issue was addressed a lot earlier than I expected, as I was thinking the so-called "PvP patch" that is 1.1 would promise a form of "endgame." In a patch with a surprising amount of class changes and quality of life changes to Legendaries to not only make them stronger than Rare items, but also give them unique qualities that are truly legendary, another piece of content, known as Paragon Levels (similar to some community suggestions), looks to be a way to add an enormous amount of character progression even after the level cap (and the community have made some similar suggestions regarding this).

With that said, let's look at some of the more important highlights of this week's patch notes:

(TL;DR version: If you own the game take a look at the updates and see if you like the changes. It's not like it costs anything. I would wait if you haven't bought the game yet though.)

General

Paragon Levels Added:

• After a player reaches level 60, killing monsters and completing combat challenge streaks (Killing Blow, Massacre, etc)  will begin to award experience towards Paragon levels
• Each of the 100 Paragon Levels will award stats similar to leveling up and 3% Gold/Magic Find.
• In addition, a distinctive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown.

This change, announced only recently, promises to be one of the most important changes to Diablo 3. It makes playing the game (even if you still have trouble progressing through the Acts) rewarding because you now invest some experience gains towards Paragon Levels, which will be helpful in the long run.

Keep in mind that stats given while leveling up is very small (about 1 or 2 points into each stat) so it won't be extremely broken to grind Paragon Levels. In addition, getting Paragon Levels is going to require an insane amount of experience (said to be in the billions), supposedly taking as long as two years of dedicated gameplay to get to Paragon Level 100. Regardless, I probably won't be one of the people grinding to Paragon Level 100 (I'm too busy with other games) but may casually play Diablo 3 again to get some Paragon Levels to help with my Magic Find, especially due to other changes. Who needs ladder resets now, right?

• Pets with passive life regeneration (most notably Followers, Zombie Dogs, and Gargantuans) have had their life regeneration greatly increased from levels 30-60
• Most, if not all, area of effect abilities do 90% less damage to pets and followers.

These changes mostly related to quality of life changes to pets and followers. Not only are they now more difficult to kill from collateral damage (no more of the Templar dying to Plagued elites!), but pets and followers will now heal a bit faster, keeping the theme of a fast-paced game.

Nephalem Valor now grants +15% Bonus Experience per stack, as well as +15%  to Magic Find and Gold Find

Keeping with the Paragon Levels implementation, Nephalem Valor granting experience bonuses seems logical. It might also reduce the grind time too for players who can manage the buff well.

Magic Find will now cap at 300% (Nephalem Valor bonuses will still stack beyond this cap)

While this change is said to wean players off Magic Find equipment (which is a shame to all those people who dropped a ton of gold on Magic Find gear), it's probably to keep the more uncommon equipment from dropping far too often keeping the Auction Houses in check (although there are still some problems). Keep in mind this means at Paragon Level 100, you don't need Magic Find gear and the maximum possible Magic Find is 375%.

Magic Find is no longer averaged among all players in a multiplayer game

A fair change that prevents people with high Paragon Levels from becoming a commodity.

A new tutorial about "Elective Mode" will now appear when a player enters Nightmare, Hell, or Inferno difficulty for the first time

I really appreciate this change because to be honest, I had no clue what Elective Mode really was until around halfway through Nightmare. That tutorial near the start of the game went right over my head.

Auction House

Auctions can now be cancelled at any point so long as they do not have any active bids

This is something I've been waiting for! I even made a mention of a similar suggestion in one of my earlier articles. This will make it auctions that aren't selling replaceable with other auctions that might.

Number of "Preferred Stats" allowed per search increased from 3 to 6

Though not exactly what I was looking for, this is a good change anyways because items can only have that many attributes on them anyways.

Stat increases which come from slotted gems are no longer taken into account when searching for equipment

Another change to the Auction House search functionality that I wanted. This must've been suggested a lot because I pretty much word for word made this suggestion.

The maximum stack size of gold per listing has been increased from 100,000 to 1,000,000

This applies to the Real Money Auction House's gold selling functionality. The stack size was probably increased due to the amount of gold flowing through the Diablo 3 economy (whether it's all legitimately acquired is another story), driving gold prices right through the floor. I kind of wish they'd find some ways to deflate the economy, however, due to this and other issues.

The Auctions tab and Completed tab will now refresh when a player’s item has been purchased

This is helpful because Auctions and Auction Winnings can now be obtained much faster (before the refresh timer was noticeably longer).

Players can now search for stats on Legendary items

This change is extremely helpful because Legendary items tend to roll attributes with significant variance. This will likely be even more so with the Legendary item changes.

"Attack Speed" is now a searchable affix for quivers

Excellent change because to be honest there is a significant difference between having a 14% attack speed quiver and a 15%+ attack speed quiver.

Battle.Net

• The "Report Spam" option is now available in the main menu when right-clicking on a player's name (rather than being hidden in the "Report" sub-menu)
• Reporting another player for chat spam using "Report Spam" option will now also temporarily mute that player for the duration of your login session

Both of these are helpful changes that will be nice for dealing with the pesky advertising spammers. There's similar functionality for the latter in World of Warcraft already though, which makes me wonder why it wasn't this way when the game went live.

Shift-left-clicking on a player’s name will now display the following information: [Name]: [Level][Mode][Class] – [Act (difficulty)] (i.e. "[Pixie]: Level 45 Hardcore Barbarian – Act I (Nightmare)")

Another implementation taken straight from its sister game World of Warcraft. This is essentially the equivalent of /who.

Bosses

Most of these changes were bug fixes. It is interesting that some boss projectiles can be slowed though, but nothing more notable than that.

Crafting and Followers

A repair tab has been added to the Blacksmith

I strongly agree with this change. It makes sense that a blacksmith should repair.

The last follower a player had active in a single-player game will now be restored automatically after leaving a multiplayer game

This is a convenient change. It means you don't have to "rehire" your follower every time you do Multiplayer games. It got a little (unnecessarily) annoying after awhile.

The frequency of follower dialog has been reduced

While this didn't bother me, I can understand why this change was made. The followers had a tendency to talk every minute or half minute or something like that.

Items

All level 60- 62 damage affixes have had their Minimum and Maximum top-end damage values increased (reducing the gap between such items and level 63 items).

I like this change because I generally favor using such items (level 63 items have a tendency to be annoyingly expensive). I agree that the damage differences was too significant.

Two-handed melee weapons have made more viable:

• Two-handed melee weapons can now roll their own affixes for core stats (up to 70% more) as well as higher damage values (as compared to one-handed melee weapons)
• + Crit Damage, Life on Hit, Life After Each Kill, and Life Steal values can now roll up to 200%

This is another change I really like because I found 2-handed weapons for melee to be downright underwhelming beyond belief. This doesn't affect ranged weapons because of items like quivers.

• All off-hand items (mojos, orbs, quivers, shields) can now roll Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in the same ranges as Armor and Weapons
• Off-hands can now roll Reduced Level Requirement

I am almost certain this is a buff. It makes the usage of such off-hand items a (potentially difficult) choice (especially since two-handed weapons have also been strengthened).

Repair costs have been reduced by up to 25% for item levels between 53 and 63

It seems that enough of the community has expressed their disagreements with the previous repair cost change. I think this is a step in the right direction of making fair repair costs. In fact, this reduction may put repair costs in a good place.

• Weapon racks have had their weapon drop rate restored to 100%, though weapons are more likely be of Common quality (white or grey items)
• Destructible objects now have a chance to drop items again

I'm glad to see this sort of thing coming back. Reverting the previous changes was a good call, even if it isn't as profitable as it was prior to patch 1.0.3.

The text color of gems, potions, crafting pages and tomes dropped on the ground has been changed from white to light blue

These items should be easier to notice now when dropped. I wish they'd increase the value of white items a bit though since white (common) items are now almost completely useless.

The maximum stack size of gems has been increased from 30 to 100

This is a great change. It means I won't have to use half of a stash page to hold gems.

Legendary Items

These changes are technically part of a subsection, but there's so many significant changes it warrants its own section for review.

• Custom proc effects have been added to over 50 Legendary items and Set item bonuses
• All Legendary items will now roll with at least one of the following affixes to ensure that their DPS is viable: +Elemental Damage, +Attack Speed, +Critical Damage, +%damage, Has Sockets
• Affix values on Legendary items are no longer demoted and will now roll at their maximum potential
• Many lower level Legendary items have had their affix count increased to 6
• Legendary items based on Uniques from previous Diablo games have received a tuning pass to make their stats more reflective of their ancestors 
• The chance for a Legendary item to drop that's below an item level of 50 has been increased
• Item level 63 Legendary items have been added to the game

These are a bunch of awesome changes. I like how they not only made Legendary items stronger in general, but added special procs to some (in the form of summons, etc). In addition, the item level 63 Legendaries mostly take the form of the current class sets (which were item level 61) which may guarantee they are among the best pieces of gear to acquire. The increase in drop chance for lower level Legendaries is also nice because they just seem nonexistent from my playthroughs and their value drops off anyways.

Monsters

There are a huge amount of monster changes but there's some clear general trends, so in some cases, instead of just posting the values, I'll just write some general statements that sum up the changes and discuss those instead.

• Monsters across the game have had a pass to make their experience and loot rewards more proportional to the effort required to kill them
• Normal monsters should now drop Magic (blue) items and Rare (yellow) items approximately 4 times more than before

The former change seems alright. It normalizes loot drops based on the difficulty of mobs, making it so one cannot constantly farm weaker mobs, but also gives a good reason to challenge oneself by fighting the more difficult mobs when possible.

The latter change is just awesome, though I wonder what sort of impact it will have on the amount of Magic and Rare items flowing into the economy especially given last patch. Either way, there's pretty much no excuse to skip past normal monsters now.

• Experience awarded by level 61-63 monsters has been increased by approximately 60%
• Bonus health granted to monsters in co-op games has been reduced to 75% per additional player for all difficulties:

The first change is to account for Paragon Levels, since technically the monsters have an experience award but it's probably only slightly higher than monsters on Hell mode.

The latter change seems like a pretty huge nerf (especially since on Inferno, it's an additional 105% health per player) that will make co-op even simpler.

General monster nerfs and Inferno nerfs, such as health reductions to monsters on Act I Inferno. Some specific monsters, like Rockworms and Herald of Pestilence, also received nerfs.

These nerfs may seem like a little too much, especially for Inferno Mode, which already received nerfs. I hope they release some endgame content quick because considering how irrelevant Inferno Mode has already become prior to this patch (and it is now even more so).

Questing

There's not all that much in terms of changes to questing. Just some quality of life fixes to rewards to prevent abuse or otherwise properly award players during their first play through.

User Interface

The ability to drag-and-drop skills in Elective Mode will now only be enabled while the Skill window is open

This should probably be listed as a bug fix because I think the skills should lock no matter what if the skill window is open. The reason this was implemented is because moving abilities off the action bars resulted in a loss of the Nephalem Valor buff.

Class Balance

While I could go in-depth on this section, it would probably require another article to review because class changes are extensive (though some of the changes are quite uniform). In addition, there are many previews that explain it well and I highly recommend reading them (there is a list here).

Diablo 3: A Fix To Affixes

Elite monsters are a recurring feature of the Diablo series, growing in importance with each successive game to this point, where such packs of monsters, which are exceedingly powerful, are a great source of loot due to the Nephalem Valor buff and its interaction with elite packs. However, one thing that has been discussed since the release of the game is the randomization of affixes, which give elite monsters their special quality. The pool of affixes and the way affixes are assigned in Diablo 3 resulted in combinations that have significant variance in difficulty and some are clearly too powerful in certain cases.

While I understand the randomization is something that makes the game recognizable as a Diablo game, I think there should be some checks and balances to keep some affixes from being too strong (especially in terms of melee vs. ranged). While patch 1.0.3 resolved some of the issues with these affixes, a few individual affixes need some changing and some combinations seem rather unfair when put together. That is why in this article I will offer some suggestions to changing the affixes themselves as well as the system of randomizing affixes on elite monsters.

Individual Affix Changes

In this section I will list each affix with a brief note on what it currently does. I will then note suggestion(s), if applicable to change the affix:

• Arcane Enchanted: Summons Arcane Sentries, which create beams of arcane power that deal heavy damage and rotate. I would probably reduce the damage the Arcane Sentries deal.
• Avenger: Whenever an allied monster within the same Champion or Rare pack dies, all other monsters deal more damage for a time. I wouldn’t change this affix.
• Desecrator: Creates an area that deals damage over time. I wouldn’t change this affix, although I feel it is too similar to Plagued and would consider merging the affixes into a single one.
• Electrified: Electrified monsters fire out bolts of lightning when damaged. I would consider making the bolts of lightning accelerate so they seem more threatening to ranged/mage type players while also making the spread of bolts larger so many bolts don't strike a melee player.
• Extra Health: Very straightforward affix that increases the health of the monster(s) with the affix. I wouldn’t change it.
• Fast: This affix causes the monster to have an increased base movement speed. I would change this affix to instead increase movement speed for a time (about 3 seconds) with a cooldown (8 seconds) and visual to indicate the usage of this effect. The movement speed of the monster would also have a cap so inherently fast monsters won’t get a ridiculously unfair advantage over monsters that are inherently slower.
• Fire Chains: This affix allows the monster to create fiery chains with other monsters in the same pack, dealing heavy damage to enemies the chain touches. I would change this affix by only allowing chains to be connected between a pair of mobs and multiple sets of chains from the same group of Elite monsters cannot do stacked damage to any given target.
• Frozen: The monsters will periodically create frozen orbs that deal damage and freeze the enemy in place if they are hit. I would change the orbs to spawn with more of a focus on the player and the amount of frozen orbs that spawn is based on the size of the group.
• Health Link: This affix seems kind of strange. It links together the health of all monsters in the pack. I feel this isn’t exactly a strong affix especially against aoe attacks and may need to grant an additional effect like passive regeneration or a small amount of flat damage reduction.
• Horde: This affix is only applied to Rare packs and increases the amount of minions. I would not change this affix.
• Illusionist: This affix causes the monster to spawn many duplicates of itself with far less health and damage. I would change this affix by preventing the illusions from using any other given affix-related abilities (so the screen isn’t clogged with scores of frozen orbs and so on).
• Invulnerable Minions: This affix is only applied to Elite packs and causes minions to be completely invulnerable. Fortunately this was recently changed for the better in 1.0.3 by reducing the leader’s health, which I thought was one of the issues with this affix.
• Jailer: Monsters with this affix will periodically root enemy targets. I would probably change this by putting a diminishing return on the effect so that if multiple monsters have Jailer the player(s) won’t get chain rooted.
• Knockback: Monsters with this affix knock back the target they attack sometimes. I would consider changing this affix by possibly removing the slowing effect, decreasing the knockback range, and, for the sake of convenience, if an attack that knocks a target back is also a killing blow, the target dies instantly as opposed to dying after landing.
• Missile Dampening: The leader of a Rare pack will have an area around them that greatly reduces the speed of projectiles. I wouldn't change this affix.
• Molten: Molten monsters leave a trail of fire that deal damage to targets within them and, in addition, the monsters explode when they die (I’ve died to many molten mobs in the latter manner). I would change the affix by reducing the damage of the fire trail and (possibly) making it last for a shorter time.
• Mortar: Mortar monsters will barrage distant targets with balls of flame periodically. While this has been changed to have an increase maximum and minimum range, I would still change this affix by causing the balls of flame to not be a barrage but rather a larger ball of flame that fires periodically. In addition, each target within the range will have a ball of flame fired at them simultaneously.
• Nightmarish: Enemies struck by a nightmarish monster may run in fear. I would change this by either having the effect have greatly diminishing returns or making the fear a controlled area of effect fear with a cooldown (that minions probably can’t have).
• Plagued: A plagued enemy will create a pool of plague periodically under them. This is very similar the Desecrator in that it deals damage over time. As with Desecrator, I wouldn’t change it but may consider merging it with Desecrator.
• Reflect Damage: Damage done to monsters with this affix will have a percentage of it reflected back at the attacker as well. I would change it so the ability is activated with a duration (3 seconds like the Fast suggestion) and a cooldown (8 seconds), probably with an increased percentage of damage reflected. There would also be a visual indicator.
• Shielding: A monster with shielding can shield itself, making themselves immune. I would instead change the shielding effect to reduce damage taken by a large amount like 75%, especially given the fact Rare packs can have this trait (which essentially makes it too similar to Invulnerable Minions).
• Teleporter: This affix allows monsters to teleport to a player. I wouldn't change it, but it seems too strong with certain other affixes.
• Vampiric: Vampiric monsters drain health when they deal damage. I would make this effect an activated ability with a 3 second duration and 8 second cooldown with a visual effect like the Fast affix. The healing would be significantly increased as well to make the affix require some counterplay.
• Vortex: Monsters with Vortex can transport players to the monster. Like Teleporter, I wouldn't change it, but it might be too strong with certain affixes.
• Waller: Monsters with Waller can create walls to block projectiles and the player's path. I would consider making the walls destructible (with a percentage of the monster's health, for instance).

Categorized Affixes

Changing affixes may be good and all, but I don't think it's sufficient to negate the unfairness of certain groups of affixes. This is why I also want to categorize affixes, allowing only one or two affixes from each category to be chosen when randomizing an elite pack. The following is an example of categorization of affixes:

I can't use the table HTML code to save my life, so I used Excel to make this.

The idea is to prevent several affixes of similar types from being combined to create unfair combinations. For instance, a monster with Teleporter and Vortex would be frustrating for ranged classes (especially in open areas). I did, however, leave a few combinations that can be semi-unfair, such as Waller + any Travel affix so every elite pack isn't a breeze to kill. In addition, in coordination with these changes, I would consider buffing elite packs slightly (probably more in the health department than the damage department).

Diablo 3: Patch 1.0.3a Is A Step In The Right Direction (And Player Suggestions)

Today introduced a mini-patch that fixed some bugs, but, more importantly, brought a change stated by a blue on the forum to alleviate some of the repair cost issues, specifically from typical fighting. Patch 1.0.3a cut the equipment degradation from the wears and tears of combat by half, which is great since it won't feel like one is breaking even or losing (or not making enough) from fighting. This change also makes it less punishing for players to break destructible objects on higher modes (although I wish there was some way to eliminate that entirely). It may not be exactly what I hoped for in terms of changing repair costs (by implementing fixes that actually stop graveyard rushing entirely), but it's a reasonable compromise (also I will admit the original repair costs were a bit low, but multiplying them by the amount they did seemed over the top).

On another note, it is no secret that Diablo 3 has its issues. Although I have highlighted a few, I have abstained from making too many suggestions mostly because I have yet to finish the game (or have more than one level 60), but also because I expected that soon enough there would be suggestions from all sorts of players which sometimes help to inspire the creation of some Diablo 3-related articles.

Recently I came across a couple videos from some of the more "esteemed" Diablo 3 players and thought the ideas they had in mind were pretty decent. Whether you actually like these players is another matter entirely. Either way, take a watch and make some comments (on the video) what you think if you want.

But that's not all! I also came across a massive compilation of suggestions on the forums that I think is worth a read (the poster is now a MVP...that's impressive).

Diablo 3: Patch 1.0.3 Released - Where's My Gold?

It's that time of the week again when Blizzard does maintenance and/or applies patches. This week, patch 1.0.3, which brings forth a number of changes such as a nerf to Inferno Mode. With responses both positive and negative (though since I browsed the official forums, I've seen more negative responses), I will review some of the more notable changes and give my thoughts on them. If you want the full list of changes, check here.

General

To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Hollow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.

To be honest this change doesn't surprise me. I actually used areas similar to this as shown in this video, which I recently wrote an article about. Not all the areas have been fixed (Alcarnus, for instance, is still subject to this kiting trick).

The rewards provided for replaying quests have been reduced

This is probably a change that should've been implemented long ago. In fact, I think this change may have been hotfixed in at some point and this note is here to assert the fix has been done. It shouldn't be possible to farm insane amounts of gold by spamming an easy quest, so I agree with this change.

Battle.net

Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out

At first glance it doesn't look like a big change, but it's big in the sense Blizzard is finally sorting out options and settings. Maybe there's positive more changes on the horizon.

Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session

This feature should've really been around since the game was released considering World of Warcraft has the feature. Why they only implement it now is beyond me, but at least I can block spammers now.

Some other changes worth noting are:

• Real ID inferface has been updated to look cleaner and more refined.
• You can now type /1 to quickly chat in General Chat, unlike before.

Class Changes 

There's a few gamechanging fixes here. Take note I'm not going over all the changes.

Barbarian

Relentless (Passive): Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75%, down from 100% (the 50% damage reduction remains unchanged)

This change is understandable. Having abilities cost no Fury by being at a certain health threshold seems all kinds of cheap to the point that staying at that health range has the potential to trivialize encounters, so reducing the capacity to do helps a bit.

Demon Hunter

Caltrops – Jagged Spikes: Effect will now only stack up to 10 times on a single target

I used to run this ability and rune and destroyed stationary targets, so I can completely understand this nerf.

Elemental Arrow - Nether Tentacle: Tentacles will now only hit each target once

This is a really huge nerf to this rune. While I understand the rune was downright ridiculous, especially against huge targets or elites with Missile Dampener (Nether Tentacles can literally instagib such elites) by allowing many, many hits, which resulted in making Demon Hunters deal an inordinate amount of damage, this nerf makes the Nether Tentacle rune one of the worst runes for Elemental Arrow.

Monk 

Monks can now use two-handed axes, two-handed maces, and two-handed swords

This change makes me happy as a Monk but also as a person who sells high Dexterity melee weapons. Some of them will finally have a use (beyond Salvaging).

Items

Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50% (Quivers are not affected).

This is the promised attack speed nerf per their article on patch 1.0.3. If you were stacking attack speed, expect to lose a good amount of your DPS.

High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty

Another promised change as per the aforementioned article. I think the change is decent, although it might allow players to get high-end items too easily when coupled with other changes (you can farm Act 1 for item level 63 items now, for instance). Check the patch notes for the full statistics of item drop rates.

Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63

Yet another promised change from the Design Preview. Repair costs have been increased by roughly 4-5 times what it originally was. I have some huge problems with this change, and, in my opinion, it is the main reason I dislike this patch. Consider this quote:

"...and because of that we see a lot of people wonder if 'graveyard zerging' tough enemies or 'chain rezzing allies on a boss' is intended gameplay – it definitely is not. To help solve the issue we evaluated a number of new death mechanics, such as just allowing the resurrection timer to increase even higher, disallowing resurrection during boss fights, or putting a debuff on you when you resurrect (such as reduced combat effectiveness)...

...Repair costs on level 60 items are going to go up a lot. Our goal is the next time a player is graveyard zerging a boss, it should occur to them that 'this is probably not an efficient way to go about things'..."

This means the repair cost change was mostly made to prevent behavior like graveyard zerging and making death more penalizing. However, the repair costs also affect fighting in general because equipment degrades over time anyways. In addition, if graveyard zerging was really the problem, there are some far better solutions than making repair costs increase by such a large amount. Aside from the other suggestions (which I think are also god awful), I have devised one that should work:

• When allies resurrect you, have a timer penalty that also increases (it is far shorter and independent of the normal resurrection timer) up to a maximum of some amount of time like 10 seconds. This way players can't just chain resurrect each other. In addition, the design could have this resurrection timer be party-wide.
• Since graveyard zerging really screws over elite and champion packs, and because they have now been more or less nerfed, I think it's safe to say if you can't beat the packs in a couple of attempts, you should start over. Have elite and champion packs reset their health in a much shorter time and prevent NPCs like Leah from continuing to fight when the entire group is dead (or at least prevent them from stopping a health reset). An additional variant to consider is making elites and champions berserk faster as the amount of player deaths to that particular pack increases (in Inferno Mode) to prevent group zerging. On top of this, the packs may need to reset their location.

As a final note, this change does not just affect end-game players, as players venturing through Hell Mode can easily find items in the aforementioned item level range, so this change punishes players before they even reach level cap.

-Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses.
-Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed.

I put these changes together because they're pretty much related to each other. This is essentially a nerf to finding items from containers and destructible objects (although to be honest I mostly found gold from destructible objects anyways). The magic find not working on containers hurts a lot, since I actually found Legendary items from some containers.

-The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color)

-The Staff of Herding can no longer be salvaged or dropped

This set of changes is pretty simple to explain. It prevents those nightmare stories where people accidentally threw out their Staff of Herding because they thought it was another common item (common equipment is close to completely useless in Diablo 3).

Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain

This change pretty much stops players from farming Unique monsters for salvageable equipment.

Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix

A very helpful (bug) fix that benefits DoT usage.

Crafting

Blacksmith

-The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%

-The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced

Not too helpful for me, but very nice considering how much it costs to level up the Blacksmith.

-The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50% to 75%

-The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced

Considering I made a similar suggestion in one of my articles, I am very happy to see a change (actually many crafting changes in this patch are similar to the ones I made in that article).

Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft

A nice change that also cuts down on crafting costs.

-The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced

-Weapon crafting costs have been reduced

More crafting cost reductions are good to have. They're very substantial too.

The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced

I think this is fair. Legendary items shouldn't be easy to acquire, and that also means it should be harder to craft them.

Jeweler

The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced

A change that was promised in the Design Preview that I highly anticipated. Such a change was also present in my list of suggestions.

Bosses

There's a lot of changes to the bosses, although nothing that pertains to giving bosses too many additional abilities. Most of the changes are quality of life fixes or rebalancing changes that put bosses on par with each other, especially in Inferno Mode.

Monsters

Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality

 I really like this change. It makes it so farming elites is even more rewarding. I wonder what the effect of Magic Find is on this change, however.

Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced

This is the promised change to Inferno Mode that should make the difficulty curve more fair.

-Colossal Golgor base damage has been reduced

-Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced

 I agree with both of these changes. I'm usually on the receiving end of the Herald of Pestilence's attacks in particular and die extremely fast to them.

Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified monsters no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, and Lightning damage (respectively)

A fair change. Certain playstyles shouldn't be punished in this sort of way.

Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced

I love this change. I hate Invulnerable Minion packs for the reason it was essentially the equivalent of killing 1.5 packs without this affix because of how much health the leader had.

Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%

Not a bad change. Makes Mortars harder to outrange and kite around. I have other things to say about the Mortar affix, however.

Fixed a bug where Sandwasp projectiles could sometimes become invisible

If you were wondering why you were dying to these monsters randomly, this is probably why... At least it's been fixed now.

Conclusion

And that's most of Patch 1.0.3 for Diablo 3 summed up and analyzed. I didn't go over everything here so make sure to check out the full patch notes above. Overall, I thought the patch would've been a really good one were it not for some specific changes like the repair cost change. In addition, because the patch did not address issues (though it came close) involving affixes and unique boss mechanics, I will still be writing an article about it in the future.

Diablo 3: Real Money AH Is Now Open!

Although there has been trouble over the weeks with the Diablo 3 Auction House to the point the Auction House was shut down multiple times and parts of it were disabled. One aspect that was supposedly going to be released on the 22nd of May, which was one week after the game's release, was the Real Money Auction House. However, because of these issues associated with the Auction House, the date kept getting pushed back. First, to the 29th, and then, when the Auction House actually got worse, to today...

No, I didn't actually make $1000.

Fortunately, most (including the commodity auctions), if not all, of the issues have been resolved (although none of my suggestions were implemented sadly), and thus, the Real Money Auction House is now open. It can support some currencies  that I believe to be region-based. Accessing the Real Money Auction House is a matter of clicking the small button at the top right, allowing switching between the two different Auction Houses.

However, before going off on a mad buying/selling spree, there is some information worth reading up on. I will list a few quick facts here if you don't want to go through the walls of text:

• Equipment should typically be sold for over a dollar, as each piece of equipment sold incurs a $1 transaction fee.
• The (apparent) maximum sell value on equipment is $250 (in my region).
• Gold and bulk commodities, on the other hand, have a 15% transaction fee (similar to the normal Auction House, in a way).
• On top of this, if you set up a Paypal to transfer the proceeds you generate, you incur another 15% transfer fee (assuming this is multiplicative, expect to have 22.5% of your money to be taken each time you sell gold or commodities).
• Linking a Battle.net account to Paypal is rather easy. All you need is a cell phone that accepts text messages (only available for some regions).
• These sales can be subject to taxation, so keep that in mind if you plan to make a business out of Diablo 3.
• Exceeding the maximum Battle.net balance will require you to send the excess money to Paypal or a similar payment service.

So go forth - for great profit!

Diablo 3: A Word On Inferno Mode

While Diablo 3 activity has been on the decline (at least within my circle of friends), a topic that I've found to be hotly debated as more players reach level 60 is Inferno Mode. This ranges from statements about the difficulty of the mode and the nerfs to Act 1, and, more recently, the remainder of Inferno Mode (admittedly some of the changes described in 1.0.3 are promising).With all the information (opinions) I gathered and from my own studies of Inferno Mode, I do have some statements to make about Inferno Mode and some suggestions to change it, as I mentioned at the end of my last Diablo 3 article.

What I Think Is Wrong

• I think Inferno Mode has a tendency to favor towards killing the player really quickly, especially by using one-hit kill mechanics. It reaches the point that I occasionally wonder whether I'm playing I Wanna Be The Guy.
• The mode is really punishing for melee, who inevitably have to take hits. Even with the extra 30% damage reduction they get, the Barbarian class, for instance, has trouble getting through without gear from later Acts in Inferno Mode.
• Monsters in Inferno Mode can do so much damage that they are capable of killing through many damage reduction abilities such as Ignore Pain. For instance, when doing an Inferno Whimsyshire run, normal monsters were doing upwards of 140,000 damage to my Demon Hunter (who has roughly 50% damage reduction from armor alone). Even with the 65% damage reduction abilities a couple classes have, it is still enough to kill any class in short order.
• Some monster mechanics are exactly the same in Inferno Mode as well. This means monsters can literally come at you suddenly from a screen away or otherwise make attacks that are pretty difficult to react to especially when accounting for latency (especially when playing classes like Demon Hunter who solely rely on avoiding the damage).
• On a similar vein, elite and champion packs were supposed to have some unique "affixes" (affixes are special effects elites and champions can have like "Frozen"). However, most of the stated affixes made it into all modes and instead as modes become more difficult elite and champion packs gain more affixes (up to four by Inferno Mode). It definitely combines some mechanics, but ultimately players end up dealing with the same mechanics when fighting champions and elites (although I admit some combinations are incredibly deadly).
• Overall, using a statement that has been echoed over the forums, Inferno Mode really just seemed like a large damage and health increase for all the monsters without really introducing new mechanics. While it made some mechanics far deadlier (whether due to the increased damage to the point of one-shotting or combined affixes), the design feels lacking. I feel more difficult mechanics have a much longer mileage than number tweaking (especially more so since Inferno Mode is greatly trivialized by having strong equipment, which negates the number tweaking).
• On one final note, especially with Patch 1.0.3 implemented (they even mention acts of cheesing monster packs in the article above), "cheesing" monster packs needs to be fixed. This can include abusing NPCs to finish monsters (and to prevent outright regeneration on Elites and Champions, although using such a method risks the enrage timer). I found a few methods of exploitation that exceed even these methods, making Elites and Champions far easier to farm without risk, as shown in the video below:

 

Suggestions To Improve Inferno Mode

These suggestions are not guaranteed to fix every single last problem that might be found in Inferno Mode, but I believe they can resolve most (if not all) of the issues I mentioned above.

• Inferno Mode in general does need some sort of damage decrease, primarily focused on monsters that have mechanics that have a high chance to hit, such as Lacuni Huntress (actually to be honest these aren't too hard to deal with) or Corrupted Angel (also an unrelated one worth mentioning is the bugs in Act 2 - the damage for that particular monster probably needs a nerf across all modes).
• On the other hand, I don't think health needs to be nerfed (much). This is something I noticed when I did Inferno Mode Act 1 after it was nerfed. It felt like I was doing a slightly more difficult Hell Mode Act 4 (a pretty big jump considering zombies were close to one-shotting me when I did it pre-nerf).
• Consider giving melee classes, especially Barbarians, more tools to handle the damage (if only to prevent the usage of very specific skill builds). Another possible alternative is to change or remove "invulnerability" abilities (like Smokescreen) and tune damage based on available damage reduction abilities instead (this could make champion and elite packs more fair for all classes).
• Add a lot of new mechanics. For instance, add some (more) Inferno Mode (or other mode) exclusive affixes to elite and champion packs. Also grant some monster packs a random affix or two from time to time (they have slightly better loot drop chances but not at the level of elites or champions, and do not grant Nephalem Valor) to mix things up even more. Here's some ideas of additional affixes:
• Breath Attack: Breathes a ray of ice, fire, lightning, or poison in a large frontal cone for a brief time, dealing heavy damage and afflicting additional effects. Breath attacks will always match other affixes if applicable (i.e. Frozen monsters can breath ice). (Hell, Inferno)
• Wounding Strike: Reduces healing effects for a short time and attacks also cause bleeding damage. Healing effect reduction can be reduced by damage reduction. (Inferno)
• Armor Piercing: Periodically an attack or ability will ignore a percentage of the target's armor. (Inferno)
• Armor Shredding: Attacks reduce the target's armor by a small amount for a short duration. Stacks. (Hell, Inferno)
• Resistance Break: Attacks reduce the target's resistances by a small amount for a short duration. Stacks. (Hell, Inferno)
• Blunting: Attacks reduce the damage the target deals by 50% for a short time. Alternatively, periodically reduces damage dealt by enemies for a short time. (Hell, Inferno).
• Hexer: Periodically polymorphs all enemies within a certain range, allowing only slowed movement  for a short duration (similar as Jailer). (Inferno)
• Silencer: Periodically prevents ability usage for a short duration. Affects all enemies, regardless of range, as long as they are in the same map. Attempting to use abilities will instead cause normal attacks. (Inferno)
• Drainer: Attacks also drain a small amount of Hatred, Fury, Arcane Power, Mana, or Spirit and reduces (re)generation of these resources by some amount. (Nightmare, Hell, Inferno)
• Berserk: Can berserk self for a short time, causing and receiving more damage. (Inferno)
• Furious: Enrage timer is shortened. Can only be on Champion Packs without Shielding. (Inferno)

• Enrage timers should be handled a little better. For instance, a player shouldn't constantly die at spawn if they kited a champion pack around to spawn and they don't properly reset. If the elite or champion pack enrages, the player suffers significant damage that cannot be mitigated and, if all enemies die, the elite or champion pack instantly heals to full health and the enrage timer resets.
• Superbosses should also gain new mechanics in higher modes. Since I do not want to post spoilers, I may create a completely separate article on this particular suggestion.

And that's it for my list of suggestions so far on Inferno Mode. What do you think?

Diablo 3: Suggestions For A Variety of Things

I still can't get past Act II.

It's been nearly two weeks since Diablo 3 has come out. There has been statements from both sides about how good or bad the game is. While I'm leaning on the side of thinking the game is moderately decent, I have my own issues with the game. In this article I will offer suggestions to improve Diablo 3 while dealing with most of these issues. It is a little long, so if you are looking for something specific, you can skim through or use the Find function (Control-F).

User Interface and Settings

Before getting into the meat of the suggestions, I have some things to say about the user interface and settings. Both aspects are not too bad in its current state, but I feel there are ways to improve them:

• Have an option to show resource games. As someone who plays a Demon Hunter, I have to manage two sets of resources (Hatred and Discipline). A few of the Demon Hunter abilities have a chance to generate Discipline, which can have a significant impact on Demon Hunter play. Hatred generation is also helpful to track given how many forms of Hatred generation are available. On top of that, other classes have their own resources and from what I've seen on some gear and skills, there are some "chances" to generate the class' specific resource. Therefore, everyone wins.
• Alternatively, or in addition to the previous suggestion, also have an option the resource and health at all times. It makes it resource tracking easier and helps the player to determine what abilities should be used when.
• It would be awesome to have the option to zoom the camera using the mousewheel (currently the camera zoom can only be changed between two modes using the Z hotkey). This is mostly due to the fact I play a lot of games where the camera zoom is changed using the mousewheel.
• Furthermore, something worth pointing out is that the amount of area a player can see. There is a maximum camera range, and I'm unsure if changing the screen resolution has significant impact on the camera zoon, which can affect gameplay (especially ranged classes which thrive on the ability to target enemies from long ranges), but according to this video it seems possible to have a large field of vision at high resolutions.
• It would be great to have an option to enable the sound when Diablo 3 is in the background or minimized. Many other games offer this feature and I (and I am probably not the only one) have a tendency to alt-tab the game while checking on other stuff. I like being able to hear what's going on in the game while I do this so I can react to sound cues.
• Have an option to show experience bar text as well as experience and gold gains (from quests) in the chat window. I like information. I like knowing how much experience mobs give. In addition, I have a tendency to rush through the quest rewards window on accident a lot, so I don't know how much gold or experience I got until I repeat the quest. Not a big issue, but knowledge is a good thing in my book.
• Add more graphics options. For instance, textures can only be set between high and low (and to be honest the difference isn't that significant), among other graphics options that seem rather lacking. It allows players to have more options in terms of playability varying levels of graphics due to improved framerates (for instance I would probably run the game at a medium-level graphic setup to record).
• Allow the remapping of more keybindings. Specifically, I am talking about the function keys (like F9). It is the default key for recording with Fraps, and it would be nice to keep it that way. However, in Diablo 3 it also opens the achievement window.
• This one is not a big deal, but dyed equipment should have some sort of way (that isn't visual) of denoting the item is dyed. Just a nice way to add information in case someone else wants to copy the style or remove the dye.

Gameplay

I need better gear...

In this section I will cover suggestions to improve gameplay excluding class balance.

• One thing I rapidly noticed while playing the game is that some graphical effects, especially fire effects, tend to be extremely graphic intensive. I understand that these effects are normally pretty graphic intensive, but I swear some spell effects have far more particles than others (for instance the particle effect of some components of the Nether Tentacles ability is actually pretty low even at the high graphics setting). In addition, this "issue" makes playing with multiple players much more graphically intensive (thus it would be nice to have something like in World of Warcraft where the player's spell effects are emphasized).
• Another performance issue I noticed is that the game has a tendency to stutter for some time after the game is started up. Initially I blew this off as a normal occurrence (I play Skyrim sometimes, and that game is very graphically intensive and takes time for the computer to properly load all the assets), but the issue seems to happen for quite a long time (as long as a score of minutes sometimes). Attacking enemies, for instance, drops framerate to that of a slideshow during this time. For more information on this particular issue, check out this thread. (Apparently fixing this issue would require a recoding of the game from the ground up, so try the solutions in the thread if you are having this particular issue.)
• There are some problems with gear (balance). While I understand the randomization of gear attributes is a core aspect of Diablo, when attributes are generated at abnormally arbitrary values for items of similar quality and level (for instance a level 60 magic ring can have a range of 40-80 Dexterity even when that is the only attribute on the item). In addition, considering gear is the only way to truly customize characters by attributes, item generation may need to be smarter. For instance class-specific items probably shouldn't generate with suboptimal  primary attributes (like a Wand with Strength) as frequently as one with optimal primary attributes. At the very least it would be nice to have more consistent gear attribute strength based on item level and quality (it's okay to have deviation, but it attribute ranges shouldn't be so enormous).
• Have elective mode on by default. It would be nice to know about the versatility of skill usage off the bat. It took me quite a time before I learned about elective mode (by the time I reached late Nightmare/early Hell) even though there was a brief (although forgotten, due to the speed of the gameplay) note about it. In addition, add a tutorial for elective mode as soon as the first ability slot is unlocked with the option to turn off the tutorial (a check box showing "Please do not show this again" would suffice), ensuring they know about the elective mode.
• If the player is playing single-player, have the game automatically pause if the game is put into the background or minimized. This isn't necessary, but might be helpful if someone accidentally clicks off the window in windowed mode or wants to quickly switch between programs running on their computer. (I believe it would be most helpful to have this functionality as an option).
• Adjust the cost of some crafting recipes. While early on the crafting costs are tolerable, by the middle and later parts of the game crafting has a tendency to become too costly to craft individual items (specifically rare items) gold-wise. For instance, crafting a level 54 rare helmet costs about 10,000 gold. However, the Auction House frequently has items for similar prices with attribute the player may want (thanks to the usage of the filters). While this may be a problem with the players themselves, magic items in comparison cost significantly less to craft. It feels like too much of a gamble to bother crafting rare items at lower levels (at max level I can completely understand, however, although a slight price reduction may help in terms of having a gold sink where players "gamble" with the crafting system).
• Furthermore, the price of the jeweler's functionality to upgrade gems is very silly cost-wise. This is far more clear cut. Even to craft the lower tier (flawed from chipped) is about 500 gold per gem. It gets even worse by the time Flawless Square gems are reached, costing 20000 gold and 2 Tomes of Jewelcrafting (an uncommon drop in Hell Mode). The problem is that gems, up to a certain point, can naturally drop off mobs, so the gems will naturally be devalued and upgrading lower tier gems up to Flawless Square is completely pointless. Thus, it would be helpful to reduce the price in order to have the second option (possibly even to costing no gold at all).

The Auction House

Auction house was bugged when I took this. It says I have two auctions..

The auction house is a pretty nice place to sell excess items you don't need. However, there are many problems at the present and further issues might spring up that could severely harm the Diablo 3 gaming economy.

• Improve the auction house's filtering system by allowing the option to filter out certain attributes. This helps deal with the random item generation and gives players items with attributes they do not want (like a Demon Hunter might not want Intelligence on their gear)
• Improve the auction house's filtering system by allowing item searches by name for all items, whether they are equipment pieces, commodities, or crafting recipes. This will allow people to type out what they want (they can even type out magic item prefixes/suffixes they want and filter items that way instead of using the attribute filtering system).
• Improve the auction house's filtering system by allowing item searches with attributes similar to that of an item you have. This is not only helpful for finding suitable upgrades, but also fantastic for sellers, since it is hard to filter out for every attribute possibility for each item one may want to sell (and quite frankly it's a lot more work than the seller should have to do).
• Allow players to see their own broken gear on the auction house. This one is straightforward. It allows players to see their own gear and determine whether they need an upgrade (also the side-by-side comparison doesn't always work). Alternatively, allow the gear to be repaired while using the auction house for the same price.
• Have more ways to sort items. Specifically, I am looking for by level and by price.
• On another note, it would be nice to have some way to exclude items that are socketed, but already gemmed (it tends to go through filters the way I use them at the moment).
• Add more functionality to the auction house, such as by allowing auction cancellation early and/or having shorter item posting times. It allows players to switch out items that are clearly not selling for an item that might sell. It would also be a good way to allow such item replacement given how few items are allowed to sell on a per player basis at any given time (i.e. 10 auctions are allowed at any time).
• Equipment is currently reusable and resellable with the current system. This may have been viable in Diablo 2, but mostly it was because the online ladders got reset periodically and item trade was more direct and not as much within the game's focus. However, with a public trading system, item trade is much more accessible, and with it there needs to be checks to ensure prevention against issues like inflation and item flooding. 
• Because of this, I suggest that items that are purchased from the auction house, then equipped, become account bound (and have a warning when attempting to equip). This will allow players who acquire an item and use it for a time to sell it and for players who want to play the market to do so, but people who actively find an item will not be able to purchase it, use it, then reap a resell value and further increase the market's overall equipment "supply."

Demon Hunter

I may not have played other classes much, but I have played Demon Hunter enough that I have a few suggestions to offer (some of which have even been discussed numerous times in the official forums).

• One thing I sort of noticed when playing a Demon Hunter is most of their shots do a lot of damage. They can do as much as 300% (or more) weapon damage and be shot really fast. Abilities like Elemental Arrow - Nether Tentacles are example offenders (it does 155% weapon damage but can hit enemies multiple times and on top of that it heals the Demon Hunter for a fraction of the damage). Not really sure if it needs a nerf, but I've heard other (ranged) class damage is much lower.
• While Smokescreen on release was far too strong and could be chained to become invulnerable, in its current state the base ability is extremely underwhelming. It lasts about one second (one second of invulnerability) on a three second cooldown and is limited by a resource. Because of this short duration, the only rune that is really viable is Lingering Fog, which increases the duration.
• However, resolving this problem by putting a longer cooldown and giving back the original duration would allow Demon Hunters to resurrect party members virtually uninterrupted. I would instead suggest that the base duration is increased to 1.5 or even 2, and that Lingering Fog rune increases the duration by between 0.5 to 1 seconds (not 1 second if the base duration is increased back to two). Smokescreen should also have a longer cooldown (as long as 10 seconds or more, possibly, if other suggestions are implemented). Alternatively, have Smokescreen reduce damage taken by a very large amount instead and give it the original duration.
• This brings me to the next issue of Demon Hunter not really having any passive defenses. This makes Demon Hunters extremely reliant on having a good connection to react to attacks (even those attacks that can come from quite a distance away or are so fast that only the sharpest of human reflexes could even possibly react in time even at 0 ms latency). In addition, Demon Hunters only really have two ways to defend themselves from direct damage, and both are tied to the same resource. Because of this, the alternative defensive ability, Shadow Power with the Gloom Rune (65% reduced damage taken for 3 seconds and costs as much Discipline as Smokescreen) is sometimes, if not often, ignored in favor of Smokescreen, but to be honest it's not really enough.
• This brings me to my suggestion. Demon Hunters simply need some more passive defenses. From what I can tell all the other classes have some additional form of damage reduction (melee classes, for instance, automatically have 30% extra damage reduction because of the nature of melee classes having a disadvantage against a large number of mechanics, including melee attacks from mobs). It would be great to at least have a passive skill like that of the Witch Doctor's that reduces all damage taken by a flat amount (20%). Making changes like this to the Demon Hunter's defensive utility would give further reason to nerf Smokescreen to prevent Demon Hunters from having one extremely strong gimmicky cooldown, even as they do now.
• I never thought this would happen outside of World of Warcraft (or Neverwinter Nights 2, I guess, but that's a different story), but pet AI in this game is pretty bad. Given how Demon Hunters (and possibly Witch Doctor) like to stay at a range, the pets sometimes never go out to attack (thus assisting their master). I've also read, and personally had, issues where my pet would go out to attack mobs (like Treasure Goblins) without me wanting them to. Because of this, I think there should be some way to control what the pet does, whether to tie pet attacking to the master's act of attacking, or going all out and adding a pet bar to all pet using classes like in World of Warcraft.
• Another thing specifically about Demon Hunter pets is that they seem to deal a rather underwhelming amount of damage to the point the passive effects greatly trump anything related to the pet's act of attacking (I do think the Spider pet's slowing attack is underwhelming considering there are a litany of Demon Hunter abilities that are superior and using a ranged weapon with cold damage essentially accomplishes the same thing). In short, most builds, if any, use Bat Companion purely for the Hatred regeneration, which probably needs to be nerfed in its own right (generates 3 Hatred per second).
• I therefore suggest the following (assuming pet AI is improved somehow):
• Increase the base damage done by the original raven pet to as much as 80% weapon damage or otherwise somehow improve their damage (if they don't scale of attack speed, for instance, allow them to).
• Have the spider pet do a bit less damage (as little as 50% weapon damage) and have the slow apply to multiple targets or make it so the Spider attempts to attack many different targets.
• Reduce the bonus passive Hatred generation of the bat pet to as little as 1. In addition, also consider increasing Hatred generation done by Hatred generating attacks (or have the Bat's attacks generate Hatred).
• Have the boar's attacks deal more damage (around 90% weapon damage?) and splash a lesser amount of damage over a reasonably sized area.
• Ferrets not only need to run independently of each other (as opposed to stacking up) but also need to act independently of each other. In addition, have a bonus passive effect that increases gold and health globe pick up range while the Ferrets are active by some percentage.
• Have the wolf companion last longer (as long as 40 seconds) and instead cost Hatred instead of Discipline (if any resource at all). The damage it deals should probably be around 110% weapon damage (instead of doubling it to 160%). In addition, it should have some bonus active attack such as a rending attack that does additional damage over time or it can howl and increase damage done by both pet and master by a small amount (like 5-10%) for a short time (like 5 seconds) with a cooldown (20 seconds, for instance).

• It's not important, but it would be great to have some sort of way of knowing a pet is active (such as a portrait or a buff). It helps because sometimes the pet is forgotten in such a fast-paced game (and if you're like me you summon the pet again thinking it's not summoned sometimes).

Conclusion

And that's it for my suggestions so far. As I play more classes I may also add in more suggestions for those classes and I have some things in particular to say about Inferno mode in general. I will also post a follow-up article, as I am not quite finished yet, detailing something I consider a bug with possible suggestions to fix it.