SotR Beta Changelog: April 12th, 2024

SotR Beta April 12th, 2024 Changelog:


General:

• The new Runeword system has been added. You can now directly enchant Runewords onto applicable items without having to put runes in the sockets, and the sockets can be used for other things. Runeword Patterns must be found for each Runeword for your character to permanently learn how to create them. Patterns will be obtained by various means, such as vendors, world drops, and specific bosses. Once you've learned a Runeword Pattern, you can always enchant that Runeword onto items, as long as you have the required runes.


• The Workbench system has been added. You can now craft rare items at the workbench and add various affixes / modifiers, including the ability to temporarily prevent prefixes or suffixes from being changed from other crafting materials. There are also exclusive affixes found at the workbench that cannot otherwise appear on rare items.


• Quick Cast (cast bar) has been added. You can now assign skills to 4 additional hotkeys (QWER by default) and they will be casted when their hotkey is pressed, instead of having to swap to them and click your mouse. The bottom interface has been redesigned to take full advantage of this sytem. Weapon Swap hotkey has been switched to "~" and Quest Log has been switched to "L". All of these hotkeys can be reconfigured in "Configure Controls".


• Disenchanting items has been added, you will find the "Disenchant Items" button in the bottom right corner of your inventory. You can click this and then click item(s) to disenchant them directly from your inventory and cube without having to go back to a vendor in town.


• Death recap has been added. You will now have a "Death Recap" button appear when dying that you can click to show you the last 72 events that happened to your character, including healing, blocks, dodges, damage taken, the type of damage you took, the source of the damage, and finally your death.


• Help Menu / Tip system has been added. Players will now receive tip popups to help guide them through what Annihilus has to offer, such as letting them know about the Soul Grid / how to spend their Soul Point when they gather their first soul. Clicking the tip popup will open a much more expansive article found in the new Help Menu, which can be accessed at anytime by pressing the "H" key.


• Interactive Quest Log has been added. You will now see your quest objectives on the right hand side of the screen, and this will also show optional quests such as gathering the soul of a nearby enemy. The quest log can be toggled to only show when your automap is on, or toggled completely off.


• Skill tag display has been added. You can now see every skilltag a skill has under the skill's name in the skill description. This will let you know what stats it benefits from, such as +% missile speed, +% increased area of effect, etc.


• Spectator Mode has been re-added and brings some improvements along with it. You will now see the life / mana orbs of the player you are spectating. There are still a few minor issues to iron out and potentially some more additions coming to the feature in the future.


• Skills, stats, and Soul Grid points can all now be reset directly from their respective pages, and will be free to reset up to Level 70. At level 70 and higher, there will be cost, which will be displayed when hovering over the reset buttons.


• Characters' starting skill will no longer be granted from their starting weapon. Instead, you will start with a skill point in one of the level 1 skills. This can be respecced right away from the skill tree page with the feature listed above if you prefer to choose another starting skill. Because of this change, starting weapons will once again have an implicit.


• Soul Grid now has shows how many souls you've collected out of the maximum amount, and you can toggle a window to see specifically which souls you've collected so far.


• Chill ailment has been reworked. Chill now has a base 5% chill effect (lowering attack / cast / run speed) and gains 1% for every percentage of life lost from the damage that triggered the ailment, up to 25%. Killing Chilled enemies will shatter them, dealing x% of their maximum life as cold damage in a radius, where x is the chill effect. This damage can also chill and shatter, but it will be ran through cold resistance again.


• Condemn ailment has been slightly reworked. Condemn will condemn the enemy for 3 seconds, when expiring it will deal true damage (ignores all mitigation) equal to the amount of damage that originally condemned them, along with all damage they took while condemned; up to 500% of the original condemn damage. If the 500% threshold is reached before the 3 seconds is up, it will "pop" early.


• Shock ailment now has a base effect of 5% damage splashed to nearby enemies, up from 1%. This will still increase by 1% for every percentage of life lost from the damage that triggered the ailment, up to 20% per shock stack. (Still caps at 3 stacks, for a maximum of 60% damage splashed to nearby enemies)


• Poison and Chill Length are no longer reduced by poison / cold resistances.


• Poison length has been increased to a flat 5 seconds from all sources, up from 2 seconds. This will make poison scale better in the late game, and keep it consistent with the length of other DoTs, such as bleed and burn.


• Poison and burn damage is no longer taken into consideration during hit recovery calculations.


• Poison and burn damage can now be retroactively reduced if you increase your resistance to them during the damage over time, such as with a potion effect.


• Physical resistance provided by defense is now uncapped, allowing it to further negate physical pierce. Physical resistance is still capped at a base of 75%.


• Holding down a skill hotkey will no longer get reset when the target under your cursor dies.


• /nopickup is now a toggleable option under "Gameplay" settings within the in-game Esc menu, and will be remembered between games.


• You can now hide your gamename and password in the top right corner under "Automap" settings within the in-game Esc menu.


• Experience gained between levels 30-64 has been increased, which should hopefully resolve the issue causing characters to to gradually fall behind the area level.


• Mercenaries no longer have differing skills based on the difficulty they are hired. All of their possible skills will now be listed when they are hired, and they will gradually learn those skills as they level up. Also, mercenaries will always use a skill and no longer use basic attacks.


• Mercenaries now have Energy and will gain additional Energy per level, similar to how their Strength and Dexerity function now.


• Mercenaries' base damage is now considered actual weapon damage instead of flat physical damage. This means the damage will be converted to fire damage when a Rogue mercenary uses Fire Arrow, for example.


• Act 3 Mercenaries now gain +% Spell Damage instead of weapon damage per level, as they only use spells and were inherently weaker than other mercs.


• Mercenaries' skills now properly scale with weapon range.


• Mercenaries (Especially Act 1 and 3 Mercs) no longer have a chance to not attack, especially when at lower levels.


• Mercenaries' defense per level has been drastically lowered. The extremely high values are no longer necessary as mercenaries now have full equipment slots.


• Added caching for the loot filter to help improve performance when there are several items on the screen.


• When enchanting a Runeword onto an item or when buying an item from a Vendor, the currency will now be pulled from your Stash if necessary.


• Various changes have been made with how the game handles movement, this will reduce some of the desync that can happen while moving. We've also made changes to how the game handles input commands to reduce the latency between an action and the response.


• Minion Recall now has a graphical overlay and sound effect to make it easier to recognize it successfully casted.


• Thorns damage (damage dealt to attackers) will now reflect damage back to all attackers, even if you're struck by a spell. This includes Ice Armor / Overcharge.


• Boss monsters will no longer automatically be 5 levels above the area level. This will resolve issues such as bosses dropping rare items that cannot be used for several levels, while also allowing us a bit more control overall.


• Debuffs will now be displayed above the right side of the experience bar, while buffs will still be on the left side.


• The area level in the top right corner will now change color based on how close it is to your character's level. If the area level is within 5 levels of your character, it will be yellow. If it's a 6-9 level difference, it will be orange (higher) or green (lower). Lastly, if it's a 10+ level difference, it'll be red (higher) or gray (lower).


• Sell / disenchant values for rare items have been increased for exceptional and elite bases.


• Character sheet will now show your exact attacks / casts per second based on your attack and cast speeds.



Classes:

Amazon

• Inner Sight now properly increases damage taken from critical strikes.


• Valkyrie / Doppelganger will now only use skills you've learned. If you have not learned any skills, they will use normal Attack.


• Cold Arrow's base damage and damage per level has been increased. Now shoots an additional arrow every 5 skill levels, instead of every 5 base skill levels.


• Magic Arrow's base damage and damage per level has been increased.


• Fire Arrow's base damage and damage per level has been increased. Now shoots an additional arrow every 5 skill levels, instead of every 5 base skill levels.


• Buckshot's base damage and damage per level has been increased. Missile speed and range has also been increased.


• Guided Arrow's damage per level at later levels has been increased.


• Freezing Arrow now properly increases damage taken from critical strikes.


• Rain of Arrows Weapon Damage and damage per level has been greatly increased.


• Strafe's damage per level has been increased at later levels, and animation speed has been greatly increased.


• Jab's base range has been increased, and damage per level has been increased at later levels.


• Poison Javelin's base damage has been slightly decreased.


• Charged Strike's damage per level has been increased at later levels.


• Impale's damage per level has been increased. Next hit delay has been decreased on the "smoke" submissiles.


• Skewer's range is now more slightly more reliant on weapon range, slightly increasing its overall range. Damage per level has been increased at level 20+.


• Lightning Fury's nearby enemy search radius has been increased.



Assassin

• Traps / Sentinels can now benefit from life / mana leech and will leech to their owner.


• Fire Bomb's damage per level has been slightly increased at later levels.


• Shock Web has been redesigned. Its spikes will now release a small lightning nova after a very brief delay. Damage has been adjusted to take this into consideration.


• Charged Bolt Sentry's damage per level has been drastically increased.


• Wake of Fire's damage per level has been increased. Now benefits from +% increased area of effect instead of +% missile speed.


• Lightning Sentry's base damage and damage per level has been increased.


• Death Sentinel's corpse explosion damage has been increased.


• Trap / Sentinel attacks will now be treated as if they are created by your character, meaning their stats will be calculated in real-time, such as critical strike chance, and will no longer snapshot when summoned.


• Sentinels will now warp with you to new levels and no longer need to be resummoned. Originally, they were intended to not warp with you to prevent snapshot abuse, but this is no longer necessary due to the above change.


• Sentinels idle sound is no longer as loud and will not be prioritized over various other sounds.


• Tiger Strike's damage per level has been increased at level 20+. Increased Physical Damage granted when empowered has been drastically increased.


• Dragon Talon now has a 15% damage synergy per active charge, up from 10%.


• Cobra Strike's damage per level has been increased at later levels.


• Mind Blast's damage per level has been drastically increased at later levels.


• Shadow Master will now only use skills you've learned. If you have not learned any skills, they will use normal Attack.



Barbarian

• Leap is no longer an innate skill.


• Seismic Slam now does its correct damage. It was previously starting off way too strong but fell off at later levels.


• Shield Throw's damage bonus from defense has been slightly lowered.


• Rend's base damage and damage per level has been increased.


• Avalanche's hitboxes are now accurate with the missiles falling from the sky, and will only inflict damage when/where they actually hit the ground. Due to the speed of the rocks falling, we left the delay / ground indicator intact, unlike the Blizzard changed mentioned below. Weapon Damage increased to 50%, up from 40%. Base damage and damage per level has also been increased, especially at later levels.


• Whirlwind is now a toggleable aura, and will reserve 25% of your life instead of draining your life and preventing life leech.



Druid

• Taste of Blood's Blood Scent range now scales with +% increased area of effect.


• Feral Howl and Rampage are now properly considered cooldown-based skills and will trigger procs such as the Safeguard soul node.


• Firestorm / Molten Boulder's base damage and damage per level at earlier levels has been increased.


• Eye of the Storm's Flame Hurricane now also benefits from +% increased area of effect.


• Hurricane's persistent storm effect now also benefits from +% increased area of effect.



Necromancer

• Blood Golem no longer drains its own life, but it still does not benefit from the passive regeneration it gives to nearby allies. Blood Golem will also still heal itself upon attacking enemies.


• Revived monsters are now considered Undead.


• Poison Slash has been revamped. Now releases its toxic clouds in a cone that briefly lingers, and increases the duration of all poison effects on enemies hit for 5 seconds. Weapon Damage and damage per level has been adjusted accordingly.


• Poison Nova's damage per level has been increased at level 20+.


• Poison Explosion's damage per level has been increased at higher levels.


• Poison Maelstrom now deals 40% weapon damage, up from 33%. Base damage and damage per level has been increased. Cast animation once again scales with cast speed instead of attack speed.


• Bone Spear's cast animation once again scales with cast speed instead of attack speed.


• Curses / Incantations will now benefit from +% increased area of effect.



Paladin

• Auras have been redesigned. Auras are now casted to be toggled on / off, and they will reserve a percentage portion of your mana that cannot be used. This allows you to have multiple auras active if desired, and you do not have to leave the auras on as an active skill.


• Infuse Fire, Infuse Cold, and Infuse Lightning have been renamed to Holy Fire, Holy Ice, and Holy Lightning respectively.


• Fanaticism now grants 1% additional attack speed / cast speed / run speed per 1 base skill point, up from every 2 base skill points.


• Zeal's base damage and damage per level has been increased. Zeal's animation speed has been increased.


• Smite's Heavenly Wrath hitboxes are now accurate with the missiles falling from the sky, and will only inflict damage when/where they actually hit the ground. These changes will make the Heavenly Wrath hit much more consistently, and there is no longer a next hit delay. Heavenly Wrath's duration has been slightly decreased.



Sorceress

• Fire Ball now shoots an additional Fire Ball every 10 skill levels.


• Charged Bolt's damage per level has been increased at later levels.


• Glacial Spike now shoots an additional spike every 10 skill levels. Glacial Spike's impale animation on chilled enemies now happens faster and doesn't linger as long.


• Meteor now lowers the fire resistance of ignited enemies by the correct amount.


• Blizzard's hitboxes are now accurate with the missiles falling from the sky, and will only inflict damage when/where they actually hit the ground. Because of this, the delay / ground indicator has been removed as it is no longer necessary. Damage per level has been increased at later levels.


• Hydras will now once again properly benefit from +% missile speed and +% spell damage.


• Hydras can now benefit from life / mana leech and will leech to their owner.


• Hydra attacks will now be treated as if they are created by your character, meaning their stats will be calculated in real-time, such as critical strike chance, and will no longer snapshot when summoned.


• Absolute Zero now properly benefits from +% increased area of effect.


• Combustion's base range has been increased, and weapon range has an increased effect on the range scaling. Hitbox size has also been slightly increased. Damage per level has been increased.


• Ice Armor now deals its cold damage instantly to ranged attackers similar to how it handles melee attackers, instead of spawning a missile. This should address the lag Ice Armor can cause in certain situations.


• Jolt's attack speed has been drastically increased, and the base range of its lightning bolts has been increased. Base damage and damage per level has been increased.


• Howling Blast has been reworked as Infuse Cold. This is now a permanent buff that you cast, and it will reserve a portion of your mana to increase your critical strike damage, reduce critical strike damage taken, and grants a chance for all melee attacks to unleash Howling Blast. Two-handed weapons have a higher chance.


• Enchant's damage per level has been increased.


• Overcharge now also increases cast speed. Now deals its lightning damage instantly to ranged attackers similar to how it handles melee attackers, instead of spawning a missile.


• Thunderclap has been reworked as Infuse Lightning. This is now a permanent buff that you cast, and it will reserve a portion of your mana to increase your attack/cast speed, chance to inflict ailments, and grants a chance for all melee attacks to unleash Thunderclap. Two-handed weapons have a higher chance.


• Icicle Flurry's mechanics have been cleaned up and the icicles will now come out much faster. Icicle Flurry's icicles now have a 25% increased chance of being a critical strike. Icicle Flurry's base damage and damage per level has been increased.


• Hellfire Nova has been reworked as Infuse Fire. This is now a permanent buff that you cast, and it will reserve a portion of your mana to grant execution damage, increased area of effect, and grants a chance for all melee attacks to unleash Hellfire Nova. Two-handed weapons have a higher chance.


• Overload now deals 200% of Overcharge's damage, up from 100%, and now lasts 10 seconds, up from 5 seconds.



Items:

• Several weapon implicit values have been modified to create more viable choices.


• Implicits will no longer change when an item is being crafted.


• When using an energy that modifies an item's stat / level requirements (Veiled, Potents), you will now see the new requirements before actually upgrading the item.


• Magic items will now drop identified.


• Increased Ailment Chance suffixes have had their values increased.


• Execution Damage suffixes have had their values increased.


• Amulets + to Life suffix values have been increased.


• The "of Panicking" suffix no longer grants maximum life % and life regeneration. Instead, it will now drastically increase the potency of the potion while decreasing its duration.


• The "of Everlasting" suffix no longer grants maximum mana %. The mana regeneration portion of the suffix has been increased to take this into consideration.


• A new suffix, "of Antivenom", has been added. This will reduce the length of incoming poison damage. (This will not retroactively reduce poison stacks that are already active, and poison length cannot be reduced by more than 75% from all sources.)


• Poison length reduction has now been renamed to "Poison Length Resistance" to make it a little more clear what it does and that it's specifically affecting your character and not enemies.


• Runes, Energies, and Essences now have a maximum quantity of 200 per stack, up from 100.


• Potions will start dropping less often once you reach Act 1 Hell, with the drop rate continuously lowering through the remainder of the Acts. This is because potions are not consumed, and eventually start to clutter the loot table as players should have plenty of potions to craft that point.


• Several loot tables such as Riftstones, Unstable Rifts, Cows and all jewelry / rune loot tables have been adjusted, and their item quantity will not scale as hard with increased player counts. This makes it much less punishing for players that prefer to play solo.


• El through Amn Runes have had their level requirements lowered.


• Pul Rune now increases attributes by 3%, down from 4%.


• Riftstones will now start dropping from Unstable Rifts at level 65, down from 70.


• Dagger class weapons now have much faster attack speeds compared to other 1 handed weapons to make up for their shorter weapon range.


• Normal / Exceptional base unique items will no longer have a chance to drop as their Evolved versions.


• The Iron Jang Bong has been revamped.


• The Patriarch has been revamped.


• The Gnasher's bleed proc has been changed from War Cry to Rend, but the chance to cast has been lowered.


• Shadowfang's Blood Hunt proc will now activate even if enemies aren't marked with Blood Scent.


• Headstriker has been revamped.


• Kuko Shakaku's chance to cast Fire Arrow when using a skill has been reduced to 15%.


• Gravepalm now grants Revive instead of Raise Skeleton Archer, and now grants nearby undead minions 100% of your attack speed, up from 25%.


• Jalal's Mane now grants attack speed instead of life leech. Resistance values have been increased on the fully evolved version.


• Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band now increases damage by 40-60% when near another wearer, up from 25-40%. +% Damage vs elite monsters has been slightly increased, and + to Life per level has been doubled.


• Lightsabre now adds 40 Lightning Damage to Weapon Attacks per melee attack during its activation, up from 25.


• Death's Web Poisonous Spiders have had their damage increased.


• Death's Fathom now continuously unleashes Orbs of Winter in the nearby area instead of icicles. Orbs of Winter now benefit from +% increased area of effect, and the base damage has been increased to 1750, up from 500. Now has a 10% chance to cast level 30 Absolute Zero when shattering an enemy instead of Orbs of Winter.


• Steel Pillar's Steel buff now reduces your run speed by 50%, up from 30%, and reduces damage taken by 15%, down from 20%.


• Oblivion now reserves 50% of your life instead of attempting to block healing above 50% of your life, making it much more reliable.


• Stormshield (unique Monarch) has been enabled.


• Spike Thorn (unique Blade Barrier) has been enabled.


• Head Hunter's Glory (unique Troll Nest) has been enabled.


• Spirit Ward (unique Ward) has been enabled.


• Darkforce Spawn (unique Bloodlord Skull) has been enabled.


• Alma Negra (unique Sacred Rondache) has been enabled.


• Dragonscale (unique Zakarum Shield) has been enabled.


• Cerebus' Bite (unique Blood Spirit) has been enabled.


• Ravenlore (unique Sky Spirit) has been enabled.


• Soul Drainer (unique Vambraces) has been enabled.


• Steelrend (unique Ogre Gauntlets) has been enabled.


• Sandstorm Trek (unique Scarabshell Boots) has been enabled.


• Shadow Dancer (unique Myrmidon Greaves) has been enabled.


• Giant Skull (unique Bone Visage) has been enabled.


• Verdungo's Hearty Cord (unique Mithril Coil) has been enabled.


• Carrion Wind (unique Ring) has been enabled.


• Wisp Projector (unique Ring) has been enabled.


• Highlord's Wrath (unique Amulet) has been enabled.


• Seraph's Hymn (unique Amulet) has been enabled.


• Mara's Kaleidoscope (unique Amulet) has been enabled.


• Ondal's Wisdom (unique Elder Staff) has been enabled.


• Azurewrath (unique Phase Blade) has been enabled.


• Mad Rush (unique Ward, Ifrit exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Hell Fire (unique Jewel, Ifrit exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Dark Messenger (unique Bramble Mitts, Diablos exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Gravija (unique Jewel, Diablos exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Guardian Force (unique Hydraskull, Bahamut exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Tera Flare (unique Jewel, Bahamut exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Trag-Oul's True Guise (unique Bone Visage, Trag-Oul exclusive loot) has been enabled.


• Twins' Anger (unique Matriarchal Javelin, Level 20 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Hysteria (unique Vambraces, Level 20 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Lonely Wanderer (unique Wyrmhide Boots, Level 30 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Emblem of the Edyrem (unique Aegis, Level 40 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Nephalem's Birthright (unique Amulet, Level 40 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• The Dark Wanderer (unique Ring, Level 50 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Hellfire Torch (Level 50 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Standard of Heroes (Level 50 Crucible boss loot) has been enabled.


• Death Cleaver's increasing splash damage effect now functions properly.


• Zephyr's lightning bolt damage has been increased to properly reflect 25% of Strafe's damage after Strafe's recent buff.


• Warmonger now increases minions' attack speed and damage for 15 seconds, up from 5 seconds. Now increases cast speed by 2% per nearby ally, up from 1%.


• El'druin, the Sword of Justice's proc chance for Slice of Heaven has been lowered to 20%, down from 25%. Proc change for Judgment is now equal to 20% of your critical strike chance, down from 25%. Increased weapon damage % has been increased to 200-275%, up from 150-220%. Increased % damage to demons and undead now rolls 55-100%, up from 50-75%.


• Syha'H Throd now gives +10-20 Psionic Storm as an oskill instead of removing its cooldown, as the Ctoggha greater soul no longer exists. Psionic Storm's base damage and damage per level has been greatly increased. Psionic Storm / Nightmare Orb now properly benefits from stats like +% increased area of effect / missile speed, and now properly convert their weapon damage to the appropriate element. Now rolls -10% - -5% to maximum elemental resistances, up from -15% - -10%. Now rolls 10-20% to all elemental resistances, up from 10-15%. Now adds elemental damage equal to 200% of your stacked resistance for each element, up from 100%. Now also rolls 10-20% increased elemental damage.


• Hupadgh N'gha's Quill Storm will now properly benefit from +% missile speed. Now rolls 30-40% maximum life, up from 20-30%. Now rolls 30-60% increased physical damage, up from 20-30%.


• R'luh Shagg now spawns the correct monsters from the Dreamlands, and can no longer be reequipped rapidly to continuously spawn them. Now also increases area of effect by 1% for each nearby enemy.


• Several "warped" stats have been modified. For example, max resists % and magic find % will roll much lower values. Max all resists % will now only appear on helms / body armors, while every other item type now will roll 1-2% of a single resistance. Class-specific items are the exception, they can roll a slightly higher value for elements that the class has a high affinity for. For example, druid pelts can roll 1-3% max fire / cold resist. Many outdated stats such as staggering blow / splash damage have also been replaced with newer stats such as increased aoe/missile speed and ailment chance.


• Failed warps will now reroll the item as a rare, rather than adding +70 to the level requirement.


• Khalim's Flail and Hellforge Hammer have had their stats lowered, but now have a weapon range of 3, up from 0.


• Unique items that scale based on specific resistance values (such as Hotspur or Mang Song's Lesson) will now properly consider resistances granted by the "+% All Elemental Resistances" stat.


• Delirium runeword's transformation proc now only lasts 10 seconds.


• Potions / Items with "Immune to X Ailment" will now properly remove any active ailments on you.


• + to Melee Skills / + to Ranged Skills affixes have been replaced with + to Weapon Skills. All skills with the "Weapon" tag will benefit from this stat.


• Cast Speed suffixes will now properly spawn on Staves.


• Umbral Rift Energy and Temporal Rift Energy have had their rarities swapped, making Temporal Rift Energies much more rare.


• Color Dyes on items will now make the color much more pronounced on every item type, as certain items originally does not show color well. The color name will also no longer be shown on the item's tooltip unless shift is being held.


• Anguish from Andariel's Soul has had its base damage and damage per soul gathered increased.


• Duriel's Soul now increases attack speed by 4% per charge, up from 3%.


• Prime Lightning from Diablo's Soul has had its hitbox size increased, and now hits every 4 frames, down from every 5 frames. Damage per level has also been increased.


• Token of Absolution / Soul Grid are no longer no the Gold Vendor due to respecs being implemented directly into their respective pages.


• Respec "Essences" no longer drop from Act Bosses in Hell due to how respeccing works now.


• Throwing Weapons will now appear under the "Weapons" tab on vendors instead of "Misc".


• Multiple weapon bases have been added to vendors, such as Javelins, Sorceress Orbs, and Amazon weapons.


• The higher tier unique jewelry such as Stone of Jordan / Mara's will now be slightly more rare.



Monsters:

• Monster HP bonus per player is no longer proximity based, and will consider all players in the game regardless of their location. Item quantity increase / experience bonus is still proximity based.


• Monsters now properly have a base chance to deal critical strikes, with the majority of monsters having a base 5% critical strike chance. This will likely be expanded upon in the future, with a new defensive stat added to reduce critical strike damage taken.


• Monsters at level 13 and lower have had their life decreased by roughly 25%.


• Most monsters in Act 1 have had their movement speed lowered to help ease new players into the game.


• Blood Raven now spawns with less minions, and has Dark Rangers as minions instead of Dark Archers.


• Andariel and her zombie's poison damage has been slightly lowered. Andariel's zombies no longer are constantly releasing invisible poison clouds even before being hit by Andariel's Poison Nova, whoops!


• Duriel's fight has been revamped. Avalanche is now casted every 8 seconds when Duriel is below 50% life, up from every 6 seconds. Maggots of Pain will now spawn on a 12 second timer instead of being casted when Duriel fully charges Pain Strike. Pain Strike now casts Everlasting Pain when fully charged, which is a new skill / mechanic. Duriel takes 50% increased damage during Everlasting Pain. Duriel's base attack power has been lowered.


• Mephisto's fight has been revamped. Mephisto will now prioritize Skull Missile as his main spell against ranged targets, and Nova against melee targets. Skull Missile now applies a very powerful debuff that slows attack / cast / run speed. Mephisto's Lightning spell has been replaced with Static Discharge, and can be used at any range. Mephisto will no longer cast Blizzard. Absolute Zero will now have at least a 10 second cooldown between casts. Every 20 seconds, Mephisto will warp all players in his arena to his location and cast Lightning Storm (new skill) and Time Warp simultaneously. All players in Mephisto's arena will be affected by the Animosity debuff, greatly reducing their run speed if they are afflicted with the Shock ailment. Mephisto's attack speed, cast speed, run speed, missile speed, and area of effect will gradually increase as his life decreases. All Council Members are now located alongside Mephisto and will fight with him.


• Diablo will now use Bone Prison on all players in his arena every 14 seconds. Diablo's Prime Lightning now deals 100% Lightning Damage instead of being a physical / lightning damage hybrid skill, and damage has been slightly increased to compensate. Diablo's Firestorm now deals 100% Fire Damage instead of being a physical / fire damage hybrid skill, now hits every 5 frames instead of every 1 frame, and damage has been increased to compensate. Diablo's Fire Nova damage has been increased. Diablo's Cold Touch now properly deals cold damage instead of magic damage, and has had its damage greatly increased.


• Baal's fight has been revamped. Worldstone shards will now fall every 8 seconds randomly across the arena, dealing heavy physical damage if they land on you while also shattering into a barrage of broken pieces that fly towards players. Baal will no longer use Warp Strike, and instead will cast Destruction Salvo every 25 seconds, causing him to rapidly teleport around the player for 7 seconds while bombarding them with magic-based missiles. Baal is invulnerable during Destruction Salvo. All of Baal's skills have had their damage increased and will now also scale with his attack damage. Mana Rift will now drain 15% of your mana for each hit, down from 50%.


• Baal will now always drop two random tier 1 riftstones in Hell mode for the first kill (quest completion).


• Act Bosses now drop a higher quantity of loot.


• Unstable rifts at level 9 and lower now spawn slightly less monsters overall, and the delay between monster spawns at these levels has also been slightly increased.


• Marid Djinn now cast Smokescreen less frequently.


• Djinn monsters can no longer be revived.


• Most Monsters (Maulers, Blunderbores) that use Armor Break have had the base damage lowered, and it will no longer apply an additional physical resistance reduction to the main target. This does not apply to Boss Monsters that use Armor Break, such as the Riftstone Bosses.


• Several monsters have had their Poison Slash skill level lowered, such as the Salamanders in the Tower Cellar Riftstone.


• Several monsters that had "stun attacks" will no longer stun, such as thornhulks and yetis.


• Brutes have had their Seismic Slam / Berserk levels lowered.


• Snow Drifters have had their Seismic Slam / Icicle Flurry levels lowered.


• Black Lancer innate lightning and physical damage have been decreased. This includes Black Lancers found in Crucible, Riftstones, and Unstable Rifts. Now uses Charged Strike instead of Static Strike.


• Uvhash now uses Claws of Thunder instead of Static Strike.


• Monsters that naturally drain mana with attacks (Wraiths / Willowisps) have had their mana drain values lowered.


• Arsect the Venomous now gives less experience in Normal and Nightmare.


• Mechanized Destroyer, The Swamp King, and Spawn of Ifrit (Challenge bosses) no longer grant a soul upon death. Instead, they grant a higher amount of experience and their loot table quality + quantity has been drastically increased.


• FF8 Rift bosses (Ifrit, Diablos, Squall, Griever) are now level 80-82 instead of 85. Bahamut is still level 85, and his stats have been slightly increased.


• Griever, Squall, and Bahamut will now grant a soul upon death.


• Trag'Oul and Ctoggha no longer grant greater souls, but will still grant a soul upon death.


• Greater Riftstone bosses (Warped Tyrael, Azmodan, Belial, Fallen Malthael) now all grant a greater soul.


• Belial's Extinction / Demonic Blast skill has been updated to use our new "technology" so the blasts on the ground are never desynced, making them much easier to dodge.


• Azmodan's Sin Pool damage has been increased and should once again not be realistic to facetank.


• Malthael's final phase now has less delay in between his actions.


• Behemoths in the Worldstone Riftstone now have the correct amount of life.


• Most Riftstone bosses have received various tweaks / rebalancing. For example, Guardian of Terra (Worldstone Riftstone boss) has had its damage lowered for most of its skills, and its elemental beam ability now can now only hit once every 4 frames.


• Several bosses now have a lower threshold when calculating ailment chance, meaning it is much easier to inflict ailments on them.



Areas:

• Crucible levels no longer require you kill every single monster and will be considered completed if you kill 90% of the total monsters.


• Crucible levels now have a progress bar to show you how close you are to clearing enough monsters to complete the level.


• The two most recently added large Crucible maps have been removed from the potential map pool due to player feedback.


• Plaguelands has been removed. Will return in a future season when the second half of the event is completed.


• Challenge Zones no longer require you kill every single monster and will spawn the boss if you kill 90% of the total monsters.


• Challenge Zones now have a progress bar to show you how close you are to clearing enough monsters to spawn the boss.


• Challenge Zones will now "store" all of the loot that drops until the boss is completed, and then it will drop all at once. This will prevent users from having to stop to loot while on the clock.


• Tomb of Oddities (Act 2 Challenge), Saurian Labyrinth (Act 3 Challenge), and Icebound Lair (Act 5 Challenge) are now locked for characters that have previously completed them.


• Saurian Labyrinth and Icebound Lair have had their density increased.


• Experience has been lowered in Riftstone Tiers 1-4. Values now gradually increase with each tier, with the experience eventually reaching its current values in Tier 5.


• Riftstone entrance portals no longer spawn with enemies around them.


• Riftstone bosses will now spawn alone with no other enemies nearby.


• Riftstones now have a monsters remaining counter in the top right corner.


• Two new Riftstones have been added. Hunting Grounds as a Tier 1, and Defiled Grove as a Tier 5. These are static, wide open maps that are not maze generated like the other Riftstones.


• Sewers Level 1 in Act 3 now has less rooms / is smaller in size in all difficulties.


• Durance of Hate Level 2 is now much smaller in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.


• Chaos Sanctuary now activates a portal to Terror's Lair in the middle of the pentagram once all the seals are activated instead of spawning Diablo. This allows Diablo to have his own arena to take advantage of the new boss zone mechanic.



Bugs:

• Fixed the final issue causing ailment overlays to not expire properly.


• Fixed some potential issues / crashing in Challenger's Reprieve (the Crucible loot room).


• Fixed an issue causing the timer of timed areas to overlap the life bar of monsters at the top of the screen.


• Fixed a bug causing mercenaries to trigger kill events for the player. (For example, mercenary kills will no longer trigger CTC on kill procs)


• Fixed several discrepencies in the server animation action event queue code that was potentially causing various skills to not function / display properly. (For example, Wake of Fire missiles were sometimes invisible)


• Fixed a desync issue stemming back to Vanilla Diablo II that causes Blizzard-like skills to not hit where the animation shows it hitting.


• Fixed an issue preventing physical thorns damage from benefitting from +% Physical Damage.


• Fixed an issue causing recoil damage to not actually recoil damage back to the user.


• Fixed an issue causing submissiles on physical skills (such as Impale) to not benefit from +% Physical Damage.


• Fixed an issue preventing mana leech from working.


• Fixed an issue preventing the "You have died." message from appearing instantly on death.


• Fixed the "Uh oh!" message when clicking multiple times on a soul you're attempting to collect.


• Fixed an issue that prevented skills from being casted when using "Blood Magic" if you didn't have the required mana, even though it was using life to cast.


• Fixed various leech issues that could cause monsters that steal life / mana to not function correctly, sometimes resulting in leech not working at all or stealing way too much.


• Fixed an issue causing an extreme amount of clientside lag when trying to continuously cast an incantation while namelocked onto an enemy.


• Fixed an issue causing life / mana orbs to not display their values permanently when they are clicked.


• Fixed an issue causing life / mana to not be at full values when joining a game if you have +% increased maximum life / mana stats. This will also address monsters' life bars not being at 100% in Riftstones where the monsters have increased life.


• Fixed an issue that would occasionally cause specific potion slots to be unusuable until the potion was reequipped.


• Fixed an issue causing the level requirement to be red on potions with certain affixes even if you met the level requirement.


• Fixed an issue causing certain events on a monster's death to occasionally trigger multiple times, or not at all, such as Malthael / Bahamut spawning.


• Fixed an issue causing a player's character name to appear brown in the in-game chat if the name was a certain amount of characters.


• Fixed a vanilla bug where items with oskills were being given skill level bonuses regardless of if you still had the skill. This fixes the issue with summons given from oskills not being removed after losing the skill.


• Fixed an issue preventing you from entering levels if certain skills were on your left-click.


• Fixed an issue where skill poison sources (Venom) were not being treated as poison sources in length averaging calculations.


• Fixed an issue causing poison length inflicted by certain monsters' melee attacks to be a lot higher than intended.


• Fixed an issue causing some buff icons to pixelate when not in Act 1.


• Fixed an issue causing the Annihilus to not display the correct amount of souls collected.


• Fixed an issue causing the player's automap icon to not be centered on their character.


• Fixed an issue preventing the entries remaining count from going down on certain blue rifts, such as the FF8 rifts.


• Fixed an issue preventing users from TP'ing out of blue rifts. TP'ing in a blue rift will now take you back to the rift's entrance.


• Fixed an issue with life regen values not displaying properly on items.


• Fixed an issue with percentage life regen values not displaying properly when hovering over buff icons.


• Fixed an issue causing nothing but a black screen for some users who were using Glide on an AMD GPU.