1.13...

[kingpin]

so it's a one time use item that lets you completely reassign them?

You can trade in the respec item to Akara and as long as you have an item to trade. You can do this as many times as you want. For modders you can just add a cuberecipe or alternative a drop. To allow this work for more than once per difficutly.

Currently it reset all skillpoints / statpoints that you earned by levelup. What it doesn't reset is quest related skill / stat. Those is basically gone for the wind atm. So, respec cost you those rewards permanently. But, I expect blizz fix this in their next build.

[Hans]

so it's a one time use item that lets you completely reassign them?

You can trade in the respec item to Akara and as long as you have an item to trade. You can do this as many times as you want. For modders you can just add a cuberecipe or alternative a drop. To allow this work for more than once per difficutly.

Currently it reset all skillpoints / statpoints that you earned by levelup. What it doesn't reset is quest related skill / stat. Those is basically gone for the wind atm. So, respec cost you those rewards permanently. But, I expect blizz fix this in their next build.

Or maybe they think it is a fair trade for respec by giving up your quest rewards

[k0r3l1k]

kingpin wrote:
marhawkman wrote:
so it's a one time use item that lets you completely reassign them?


You can trade in the respec item to Akara and as long as you have an item to trade. You can do this as many times as you want. For modders you can just add a cuberecipe or alternative a drop. To allow this work for more than once per difficutly.

Currently it reset all skillpoints / statpoints that you earned by levelup. What it doesn't reset is quest related skill / stat. Those is basically gone for the wind atm. So, respec cost you those rewards permanently. But, I expect blizz fix this in their next build.

methinks this to be retarded at best. If they dont fix it, the respec will be entirely self-defeating, and never be used.

There is nothing aside from the respec item that literally donzens of keep users couldnt do in a day, the time taken to make this worthless patch is inexcusible, and i think probably a sad attempt to attract more bnet users.

[Grayloch]

- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

Over at The Amazon Basin, onderduiker has been doing some tests after hearing reports that FE monsters in Hell appear to be doing more damage now. His initial test results indicate that while FE damage has indeed been reduced in Normal and Nightmare, it appears to be doubled in Hell (compared to v1.12)...

-G.

[Necrolis]

Until they fix the real bugs in the umod event callbacks, they will always be broken, no matter how much you nerf, and as for hell doubling the damage, its probably due to the monster having another event based umod which means a multiplier on the damage thats already being done

[Nefarius]

They likely introduced a ton of new garbage while fixing this stuff that will backlash hard later, when they forget they added it and add something else that causes conflicts with it. Had they got any proper documentation they wouldn't be so clueless as to how to fix things. This game is a mishmash of irrelated code that does similar tasks (theres not one place that creates damage for example, theres a load of individual smaller tables and handlers that handle it), this makes any 'simple' fix near impossible as it will collide with other (likely poorly documented) stuff down the line. Some of the stuff softcoded in v1.10 in one place remains hardcoded in other places, which causes conflicts if the value in the txt is changed (etc).

[evilsnack]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Patch 1.13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

A new Mystery has been revealed!

- Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again,
that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies
within Diablo's Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil
to the Throne of Destruction...

Put the Standard of Heroes into the Horadric Cube, with a Stone of Jordan, and click transmute. This will cause the player to be disconnected.

Major Bugs

- Fixed an item dupe bug.

When ethereal, the Unique Sash can no longer be duped.

- Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.

Audio jitter reduced by 25%.

Minor Bugs

- The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the window loses and then regains focus.

Instead, the game will simply crash.

- Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in windowed mode when it lost focus.

The game will now crash instead.

Specific changes/improvements

- Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.

When the mod testing period is over, this feature will be removed.

- Increased the drop rate of high runes.

Zod runes now drop once per every 79,999 rune drops, instead of once every 80,000 rune drops.

- Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).

But since the source graphics have the same resolution as before, the game will look even more dated than it already did.

- Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.

Which will cause players who never use them to grab them anyway, thus annoying the players who actually use them.

- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.

But the regular WilloWisps will still make one-shot kills from offscreen.

- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.

Seeing as how most people met these requirements by getting rushed...

- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

Except when we didn't.

- Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.

Thereby fixing a long chain of abuses that were as bad as duping and RWT.

- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.

After having noted that this curse had little effect on orb sorcs...

- Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.

Making life complete for those who have no life.

Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes
Druid

-Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.
-Werebear - Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per point.
-Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.

Making the affected druid builds slightly less of a laughingstock.

[kazein]

Thank you for that.

[Radamer]

Looks like they are listening to the gamers:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?to ... 5&sid=3000

Or not. It was vague, but I'm hopeful. Nefarius' list is still going strong on their 'Test Realm' forum.

[kingpin]

Looks like they are listening to the gamers:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?to ... 5&sid=3000

Or not. It was vague, but I'm hopeful. Nefarius' list is still going strong on their 'Test Realm' forum.

For those who is familiar with PTR in World of Warcraft knows this is the way Blizzard works nowdays.

They put out their patches on PTR for testing in phases and continue to develope the patch while it is out on test.

The advatage with this is faster catch any new bugs that appears, and community have easier give feedback on new/changed content.

[Gospodarik]

Like Evilsnack already suggested, this 1.13 seems to be a complete and utter n00b patch, cause it "fixes" issues that are none, just because a select few players (or the select few people who made this patch) got 0wned by a gloam boss, lost their hardcore character to a "nose enchantment" (fire enchanted) Talic or found their uber CE (code editing) necro too slow even though he's in fact a killing machine.

So let me comment on this ridiculous "patch"...

- Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.

This makes the game even more easier than it ever was, unless the player was abusing certain Plugy features. Now everyone can put all their skill points into Blessed Hammer when venturing into areas filled with physical immune monsters, and then change back to zeal/fana/charge/whatever once they are past those areas!

- Increased the drop rate of high runes.

Just because some n00bs were whining about "i dont have a zod HELP PLZZZZ".

- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.

Trans: removed one of the few remaining difficulty factors from the game just because some n00bs were too stoopid to simply increase their lightning resistance! As a matter of fact, I don't get killed by gloams because I'm running with high lightning resist + absorb, even in 1.10.

- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.

One of the few good changes to the game, it was about time someone FINALLY did this!

- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

Would it be too hard to just equip more Fire Resistance giving items. Sure, they can kill you instantly, but nothing else can (except Gloams if you're playing really bad or have negative resist), so why remove the last challenges from the game? This makes no sense but turns the whole game into a complete and utter snore fest! And also, fire enchanted is much funnier if it really is "nose enchantment", which is what I call it (that name originates from "bug enchantment" because of the fire enchanted bug: "Bug" is also a german word which, if translated back into English, means "nose".). I can laugh about the term "nose enchantment" for hours on end.

- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.

Only because some b00n-n00b doesn't know that barbs don't whirl, pals don't zeal into their death and wolves don't become furious in the CS. N00blarz!!! As a matter of fact I rarely (if ever) kill myself with IM, and if I do, I see it as an additional challenge!

- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.

As if computers nowadays weren't fast enough to handle a few little flames.

- Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.

ROFL COPTER.

-Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.

As if it hadn't been uber already.

-Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.

But FOH still does, huh? Makes no sense whatsoever.

-Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.

Yeah, great. The most overpowered druid skill of all still wasn't good enough to the patch team. They seem to be of the minority player group of "n00blarZ" who consider shockwave useless "bcuz it doesnt do dmg"! They couldn't be more mistaken!

-Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).

*yawn* The shared life effect was the only thing that made the BG interesting...

-Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.

OMG UBERPWNZORZ COPTER!!!!!!!!!11111 (oneoneone) Every necro uses this skill and it PWNz everything, but now it PWNz even more!

-Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.

Unneccesary, even without the synergy it could already one-hit-kill Baal on Hell...

-Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.

Is this the {filtered} senseless *** **** {filtered} spell timer {filtered} {filtered}? Death to spell timers! {filtered} ******* "feature" that isn't even necessary because I can fill the screen with Druid firestorms (changed so they release 100 waves instead of 3) and the framerate hardly goes down, which {filtered} {filtered}-{filtered} programmer {filtered} inserted this {filtered} for no good reason? Why, why, WHYYYYYY have skill timers in the game? Dear programmers, READ SIRIAN'S FIRE SKILLS GUIDE. Then explain to me where the strategy is in click-wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwait-click-wwwwwwwwwwwait? Why didn't you insert a new skill yet, that does 200K damage to everything on screen and has a 10 minute timer?

To be honest, at first I didn't even believe the patch text to be the truth, as it looks very much like some changes a b00n-n00b player might suggest, or an april fools joke... what kind of n00bs are the ones who made this patch? Really, I cannot believe it! So if my post is insulting I am sorry, but I just cannot believe they really made such a piece of {filtered} patch!!!

But anyway, I'm not planning to install such a n00b patch, I'll keep playing 1.09/1.10 instead which are both very interesting in their own way: I have mods for both, my 1.09 mod is balanced and very hard, and for me it's "the real game", while my 1.10 mod is just "playing and goofing around" with less balance, and of course it still has vanilla 1.10 gloams (plus some new gloams that are even stronger), insta-kill "nose enchantment" (fire enchanted bosses) etc. Whenever I want some real challenge I'm playing my 1.09 mod while the 1.10 mod is there to "relax". But I won't play 1.13 any time soon (if ever).

[Nimbostratus]

Gospodarik, chill. out. I absolutely loathe 1-hit kills in D2, so anything to reduce those is good in my book. Calling people n00bs for wanting to play without such frustrating bullcrap is highly insulting.

[kazein]

There are a few things I disagree with. For all else, read the PTR forum on battle.net, you'll read many many arguments there.

- Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.

This makes the game even more easier than it ever was, unless the player was abusing certain Plugy features. Now everyone can put all their skill points into Blessed Hammer when venturing into areas filled with physical immune monsters, and then change back to zeal/fana/charge/whatever once they are past those areas!

You can only get 1-respec per den of evil quest. Then you can get a respec 'token' (which let's you respec again) only after cubing 'essences' that drop from the act bosses in hell. I doubt many PvM players will stock up on these unless they need a stat reset for an item that recently dropped.

- Increased the drop rate of high runes.

Just because some n00bs were whining about "i dont have a zod HELP PLZZZZ".

It's been said many times before, the previous AND current rune drops are a crude joke.

- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.

Trans: removed one of the few remaining difficulty factors from the game just because some n00bs were too stoopid to simply increase their lightning resistance! As a matter of fact, I don't get killed by gloams because I'm running with high lightning resist + absorb, even in 1.10.

... with that kind of logic, why not make every monster that deals lightning attacks super-charged?

- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.

One of the few good changes to the game, it was about time someone FINALLY did this!

As it was pointed out by someone else, it could already be done by changing a register entry. Plus, not like it takes much time to beat baal on normal mode.

- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

Would it be too hard to just equip more Fire Resistance giving items. Sure, they can kill you instantly, but nothing else can (except Gloams if you're playing really bad or have negative resist), so why remove the last challenges from the game? This makes no sense but turns the whole game into a complete and utter snore fest! And also, fire enchanted is much funnier if it really is "nose enchantment", which is what I call it (that name originates from "bug enchantment" because of the fire enchanted bug: "Bug" is also a german word which, if translated back into English, means "nose".). I can laugh about the term "nose enchantment" for hours on end.

Right, because bugs are what are supposed to make the game challenging. How many players do you know that carry extra fire resistant gear around with them everywhere? Or even allot space in the tiny stash for such an item? Just like with the gloams, it doesn't take any "skill" whatsoever just to put on some extra fire-resistance, the game mechanic at it's bugged state is merely annoying.

- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.

Only because some b00n-n00b doesn't know that barbs don't whirl, pals don't zeal into their death and wolves don't become furious in the CS. N00blarz!!! As a matter of fact I rarely (if ever) kill myself with IM, and if I do, I see it as an additional challenge!

Only because it's completely unfair towards the casters ... go read the PTR forums for the 12-page argument on it.

- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.

As if computers nowadays weren't fast enough to handle a few little flames.

It's because the way they have battle.net setup, to make it short ... too many skills = temp ban, to battle bots.

-Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.

Unneccesary, even without the synergy it could already one-hit-kill Baal on Hell...

I know you're exaggerating but, it's not that powerful compared to other skills.[/quote]

[Gospodarik]

I absolutely loathe 1-hit kills in D2, so anything to reduce those is good in my book. Calling people n00bs for wanting to play without such frustrating bullcrap is highly insulting.

Of course I also don't really like being 1 hit killed, but everything else can be survived with purple potions, so imho there has to be at least some sort of challenge in this game.

You can only get 1-respec per den of evil quest. Then you can get a respec 'token' (which let's you respec again) only after cubing 'essences' that drop from the act bosses in hell. I doubt many PvM players will stock up on these unless they need a stat reset for an item that recently dropped.

But probably players will start "muling" those respec tokens, then transfer them onto badly skilled characters as needed.

As it was pointed out by someone else, it could already be done by changing a register entry. Plus, not like it takes much time to beat baal on normal mode.

Yes, but it's just annoying and makes no sense. If people want to play hardcore, let them do so!

Right, because bugs are what are supposed to make the game challenging. How many players do you know that carry extra fire resistant gear around with them everywhere? Or even allot space in the tiny stash for such an item? Just like with the gloams, it doesn't take any "skill" whatsoever just to put on some extra fire-resistance, the game mechanic at it's bugged state is merely annoying.

Well, thanks to Plugy I can stash as many as I want, and as a matter of fact I always try to have lightning and fire resistance above 75 (resist fire/ltng aura ) in order to survive gloams and FE explosions. At least in my 1.10 mod, that is. My 1.09 mod doesn't have ubergloams and uber fire enchanted bosses but even there it's still easier with high resistances. To make it short: I always try to have my resistances as high as possible.

Only because it's completely unfair towards the casters ... go read the PTR forums for the 12-page argument on it.

The entire game is designed to be hard for melee and easy for caster players... can you say "act 5 frozen creepers"??? In his Ribinak report, Sirian has made a complete list of all Act 5 monsters that are infinitely much harder for melee players than casters. It's by design, melee players always have to get close to their enemies and so it's of course more dangerous for them: they need AC, block, resists etc., while caster players can just stand back and pelt them with spells while evading their missiles. Did I already mention my 1.10 mod has re-enabled MSLE bosses (multiple shots amplifies lightning enchanted bolts again, as it was supposed to be)?

It's because the way they have battle.net setup, to make it short ... too many skills = temp ban, to battle bots.

Ugh... well, I'm soooooooo glad I don't play on bnet no more! Nobody wants to have all their "cheat protection" **** **** that automatically bans all kinds of legit players thanks to stupidly designed anti-cheat algorithms!

I know you're exaggerating but, it's not that powerful compared to other skills

Brother Laz once reported he has a fire sorc with a ridiculously high amount of +skill items and maxed firewall/FM, who could kill any non-immune in a blink. Of course, since the advent of 1.10 people have been using meteor instead...

[Nimbostratus]

Of course I also don't really like being 1 hit killed, but everything else can be survived with purple potions, so imho there has to be at least some sort of challenge in this game.

...so target the source! Nerf potions, life steal, life tap, and any other portable instant health effects.

In vanilla D2, your life bulb is essentially meaningless. Unless you're fighting something that can take down the whole thing in 1 or 2 shots, your life bulb really only represents 1/9 to 1/17 of your actual health. Why? Because you carry a dozen full-healing potions in your belt. These potions drop often enough to not run out during normal play, so the only ways you're going to die in D2 are:

• Something takes down your entire life bulb before you can react
• You do something incredibly stupid (e.g. run around with 1 HP after being poisoned)

Now, imagine if you didn't have potions that restored all of your health. Heck, imagine having no potions at all. Now you have to focus on reserving your health. Now you notice that regular monsters can harm you. Now any damage is a threat. And now 1-hit kills aren't needed.

[Gospodarik]

Now, imagine if you didn't have potions that restored all of your health. Heck, imagine having no potions at all. Now you have to focus on reserving your health. Now you notice that regular monsters can harm you. Now any damage is a threat. And now 1-hit kills aren't needed.

And then people would use a ridiculous amount of town portals to heal themselves. It would go something like this: kill kill kill TP-heal, kill kill kill TP-heal, ad nauseum, which would drive any normal player insane!

[kingpin]

...so target the source! Nerf potions, life steal, life tap, and any other portable instant health effects.

If you do this you would need increase player health with a large amount. Reduce the amount of hit a mob cause you. Not before this is done you can remove potions/lifesteal/portals e.tc.

Now, to make it a more tactical choice you can add cooldowns to portal/potions and add a heal ability to player. Either in form of proc or cooldown spell.

What we would get then it's world of warcraft. That's the direction it took and it works very well there. But, you wouldn't anymore have an action style of game that diablo is. Instead everything would progress way slower in the game and I'm not sure majority who play diablo want that.

[Nimbostratus]

I think when reading a thread about change ideas, people need to stop assuming every change happens in a vacuum (I've probably been guilty of it myself). Of course monsters' strength would have to be reduced to accommodate the weaker potions. And yes, something would have to be done about portals as well.

kingpin: How would removing potions make it a less action-oriented game? Most action games don't have any portable healing at all

[kingpin]

I think when reading a thread about change ideas, people need to stop assuming every change happens in a vacuum (I've probably been guilty of it myself). Of course monsters' strength would have to be reduced to accommodate the weaker potions. And yes, something would have to be done about portals as well.

kingpin: How would removing potions make it a less action-oriented game? Most action games don't have any portable healing at all

People don't generally like to die and need run back to res your body

There is alot thing's that may sounds good on paper but isn't exactly working in the game. I'm personally not happy with how potions work in diablo II. But, just remove them / make them weaker won't solve anything.

You can take a look at walk/run speed feature where you drain stamina for running. While it may sounds fun / realistic on paper. It's an element that very annoying from gameplay of view.

[Hans]

The new 1.13b PTR patch is online

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?to ... pageNo=1#0

Looks like they fixed some bugs.

[Necrolis]

- Fixed an issue where some players could kill other players while in town
("TPPK").

OMG!!!!! it only took them 5 years, lets see how 'fixed' it really is

- Fixed an issue where some players could disconnect other players when they had too many active states.

so it took them 7 years to copy & paste from one of the various protection hacks :O

- Fixed two issues where players could stack auras in an unintended way

what is going on here? where did all the blizzard employees go?!?!?! so now either they got some competant people(yay!) or more likely they introduced a hell of a lot more bugs(nay!)

[Hans]

I think they hired a new person.

I think they also fixed some of the bugs with mercs and aura's as well in this version or was it in the earlier version.

[kingpin]

what is going on here? where did all the blizzard employees go?!?!?! so now either they got some competant people(yay!) or more likely they introduced a hell of a lot more bugs(nay!)

They have had additional dev time to fix stuff and if you look at bnet forum this was nr #1 priority to fix (pk issue).

[saesa]

Especially Dragon Claw is interesting.. they added skill description to add dmg% synergy from mastery, but forgot to apply in skills.txt.

[Necrolis]

seems they 'forgot' two fixes in the log: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?to ... 9&sid=3000
imo these aren't properly fixed, and not the bugs related to frame stepping, it was mearly a side effect of one of the item dupe fixes

Update:

We will be resetting the Diablo II ladder on March 23 with the release of patch 1.13. We anticipate all Diablo II realms to be down for approximately six hours during the reset. More specific information on realm availability on the day of the reset will be posted in the Battle.net Status forum. When the ladder is reset, all existing ladder characters will be converted to non-ladder. All characters and items being converted to non-ladder will remain intact, but once converted these characters will no longer have access to ladder content such as creating ladder-only rune words. For more information on ladder characters please visit the Arreat Summit Realm Character Types page at http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/ba ... ypes.shtml

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?to ... 3766799033

so 23 March will see us finding what final fixes & content 1.13c has to offer etc