Median XL 2017 1.1 Version Log

[villur]

Reading patch notes be like

[void]

Will players be able to log in with mxl17 1.0?
Got a feeling my net wont be stable for big download during the hours of release

[Rishab]

Will players be able to log in with mxl17 1.0?
Got a feeling my net wont be stable for big download during the hours of release

U will probably crash when joining games

[Arc_Razer]

Timer at top right

Edit: looking forward to this

[Anonymous:]

Will players be able to log in with mxl17 1.0?
Got a feeling my net wont be stable for big download during the hours of release

Well patch notes say:
"Removed a void from ... " - so no patch for you anyways.

[willyboy]

Looks really great

Thx for the work! only 2 days to go

[Mehasto]

[MadeLaidMan]

I'm hoping the "slight" decrease to throwing barb skills' weapon damage along with Glad Dominance stats wont ruin the build

[HechtHeftig]

I'm hoping the "slight" decrease to throwing barb skills' weapon damage along with Glad Dominance stats wont ruin the build

The devs made barb OP on purpose to bring him back to life even though he was balanced before. So trust me, the upcoming nerf that the barb gets will make him balanced and it won't ruin barb.

[suchbalance]

Could you elaborate further on how divine judgment actually worked in the previous patch and how it is expected to work in the current patch for instance?

The elaboration would mean nought to you unless you are familiar with how D2 projectiles work behind the scenes, but I am sure that when you test the new version of the skill you'll see the difference.

Also I would like to comment on the whole Pala 2h situation. I don't know why people are trying to make it seem as if they are unusable. A Hand of God has DOUBLE the damage of the best Pala 1-hander, and for that you have to 1) focus on attack speed as an endgame stat rather than an afterthought and 2) lose a shield. Now as far as attack speed goes, Paladin already has an inbuilt way to trivialise the requirement - Rapture. But even if you want to go unholy influence you can still use a Hand of God at max fpa if you wanted by incorporating a wolf stance oskill in your build (since sIAS scales with slvl) - for example 2 piece Curse of the Zakarum set bonus or Auriel's Robe. But even without those items you can still use a Hand of God because even at 9fpa (achievable easily just with IAS from gear) it is competitive damage wise to a 7fpa 1h. Where you see "sadness" I see decision making and choices in character building.

I just wish that barb melee tree would have looked at more closely rather than buffing skills randomly. By that I mean playing through the game first and making the decision instead of buffing and praying. Maybe Deathgaze/Iron Spiral have potential but only time will tell. I know its almost exclusively sb doing skill stuff but I feel like reverting the melee trees would be the best option at this point. Limiting the trees with weapon requirements was the worst thing that could have happened. The only reason to dual wield before was the 6 frame attacks but dual wielding died. Using an axe + sword now to gain access to all the melee skills at the cost of a shield is a joke. I'm not saying all aspects of melee are bad because boss killing is great. Killspeed(general farming) is absolutely terrible though. Barb needs a skill with some good aoe and needs access to the skill regardless of what weapon type is being used. Hulk just wants to smash.

I can't say I appreciate you essentially calling Barb melee skill changes "random", but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time and explain the reasoning. The changes to the melee trees this patch target exactly what you already identified in your post - that barb melee doesn't have any great farming skills. To that extent:

- Iron Spiral: if you actually gave this skill a proper test end game you would notice that the damage was quite good but the skill power didn't scale well when dealing with big monster packs. The pierce change addresses exactly that allowing you to essentially aoe most of the screen simultaneously now. Number of hits was reduced to prevent it from being too OP. Elemental conversion was reduced so you can now sustain yourself better with life leech.

- Death Gaze: axe projectiles have increased aoe which again means better coverage in a crowded area. Axes will now also target offscreen enemies a bit less. Damage was also increased to make it a better farming ability and the bonus damage now scales with base level meaning that, together with Iceburst you can make a build that works very well with shitty gear and just focusing on cold pierce since you can tap a big pack once with iceburst to slow them and get the pierce and then finish them off with the big added cold damage from Death Gaze. Again, conversion was reduced so you can sustain yourself better in combat.

- Earthquake: again, damage buffed to make it better for farming (even tho it's not the best skill mechanically, it has its uses) and it is now the best Snake Stance spread melee skill.

And regarding the whole requirements situation - I don't believe there really is a big problem. Yes now you can't use Yaggai with stormblast to double dip on the lightning pierce, but that doesn't make this axe trash and secondly items are always secondary to skills so changing something just to optimise melee for 1 item is silly. As counter intuitive as it sounds putting the weapon restrictions actually now gives more choices as far as gear and melee skill plans are concerned, because if there wasn't a restriction it's pretty obvious that stormblast>iceburst and iron spiral>death gaze & thunder clap > ww & axes>swords for general gameplay so you always end up with with the same optimal build. Now each weapon path has some downsides. You can also choose to have your cake and eat it by dual wielding, but then you give up survivability & GD.