Sets Overhaul
10 brand new sets and improvements to existing sets
The role of sets in the game was lacking. Primarily due to the fact that by the time you assembled a full set, you probably were about to transition to better gear. While sets are a unique feature of Diablo, they also trivialize gear choices. It is for this reason we decided that instead of improving all set stats, we are cutting 1 piece on all sets, while still keeping the previous full bonuses. Additionally, a lot of new sets will be available, including non class specifics.
- Introduced nine new oskill-based sets & one new rare set, also re-introducing 2 beloved nostalgia oskills
- All five-piece sets are now four-piece, in multiple cases invasive slots are now free
- Reduced the level requirement of most set items to allow for extra orb space
- Sets can now drop as soon as sacred items drop
- Partial bonuses from 3 and 4 pieces are now gained from 2 and 3 pieces respectively, making set pairs viable
- The rarities have been improved and evened out, making previously difficult sets easier to obtain
- Certain set weapons have been improved to the class-specific variant specific to the build
Trap Assassin
A new revamped skill category, exclusive to the assassin
- Traps do not inherit any player stats, unless stated otherwise on the skill tooltip
- Weapon damage & Spell damage scaling attributes do not affect trap damage
- The one exception is the trap damage conversion from Subterfuge
- Trap damage scales with character level, like spells. However, unlike spells, the scaling is not limited to level 120
- Incineration Trap: new skill
- Burns all nearby enemies when placed
- Range and enemy fire resistance pierce increase with base level
- Limit: 1, Duration: 20 seconds
- Burns all nearby enemies when placed
- Shockwave Trap: new skill
- Detonates into a nova of chaotic projectiles, dealing lightning and physical damage
- Pierces enemy lightning resistance, increasing with base level
- Limit: 1 + 1 per 5 base levels, self-destructs after detonation
- Detonates into a nova of chaotic projectiles, dealing lightning and physical damage
- Catalyst Trap: new skill
- Slows enemy movement speed within its radius by 50%
- Increases the total damage of traps detonated within its radius by 100% + 10% per base level
- Limit: 1, Duration: 60 seconds
- Slows enemy movement speed within its radius by 50%
- Subterfuge: new skill
- Enables the use of the trap skills
- Only allows the use of traps/melee/summoning/buff/debuff skills
- Adds 33% of your fire, cold, lightning and physical/magic spell damage as bonus trap damage
- Increases your maximum fire and cold resistances
- You may only summon Edyrem
- Enables the use of the trap skills
- Artifice Mastery: new passive skill
- Unlock requirement: character level 96 and having all three trap skills at Base Level 15 or above
- Adds +50% to Vitality and +50% Block Rate
- Regenerates 25% of your maximum life over 5 seconds when hit by monster weapon damage
- Enables Claw Block: up to 50% chance to block when wielding two claws
- Unlock requirement: character level 96 and having all three trap skills at Base Level 15 or above
- Beacon:
- The explosion effect is now considered a trap detonation for stat scaling purposes
- Cleaned up the graphic effects to reduce visual obstruction
- Greatly reduced the number of hits per detonation and rebalanced the base damage accordingly
- Area of effect increased by 96%
- New synergy: Catalyst Trap. Standing near the Catalyst before detonation will impart the Catalyst damage bonus to the explosion at 200% efficiency
- Damage output for non-trapper builds will be significantly lower
- The explosion effect is now considered a trap detonation for stat scaling purposes
Build Improvements
Many new skills and changes to over 10 builds
Many builds are receiving changes, aimed primarily at making them more viable and competitive. As usual, the goals are to make the skills more intuitive and to properly provide all builds with skills that can both do good area damage and focused single-target damage, as well as provide defensive tools that are on par with the other classes. These changes range from full tree reworks to skill buffs and tweaks. Since we already spoiled the new assassin tree, we'll just list the builds that obtained considerable improvements:
- Unholy Melee Paladin
- Bow Amazon
- All Elemental Sorceresses
- Honorable Mentions: Bow and Wolf Druids, Javazon, Totem Necro, Rainbow Assassins, and more
Multiple Charms
Great quality of life for all trophy hunters
Charms can now be picked up and put in the cube, even if you already have that charm in your inventory. You can then store as many copies of any charm as you want in your stash. This effectively removes the dependency of requiring one character for each copy of a charm, making boss hunting more rewarding and fun in the multiplayer trading scene. Even as a solo player, this feature will prove very useful as it will allow you to do locked dungeons without having to unequip a charm beforehand.
Endgame Changes
Improvements for endgame leveling and zones
We want to keep leveling as an ongoing process in the game, but we don't want to deter people from playing multiple characters per ladder, and for this reason we are doing changes targeted specifically to improving this aspect.
- Improved endgame experience scaling
- The area level of all rifts have been modified to provide a better scaling, and no longer jumps in blocks of 5
- Reduced the size of multiple unnecessarily long mazes
- Teganze chest now only requires 20 essences or runestones to cap out
- Multiple changes to some endgame zones such as Dimensional Labyrinth, Samael, Zorun Tzin and others
Character Auto-Transfer
New feature to make trading more efficient and convenient
Starting from the next ladder, players will be able to easily link any character to an auction. In case you missed the latest trade center update, a new feature allowed you to link a mule account to an auction, and the mule credentials would be sent over to the other person in a notification. However, this will be scrapped for a much better feature: allowing you to select any character from your account (or related ones) and then the character ownership will directly change to the auction winner, if there is any. This feature is going to be free for everyone trading characters that are level 1. Auctioning high level characters at a (level-based) fee will be possible as well.
And more...
Some awaited bugfixes and more changes
This is certainly not everything, as we wish to keep many changes as a surprise for the patch-log release. Some of the most relevant bugfixes include the monster AI aggro range, completed belt GUI, mercenary resistance display, etc. As usual, we wish everyone a great start of the ladder and thank you for your ongoing support.