Did they really up the damage or did they just clarify? One of the earlier blog posts that was posted mentioned something about changing the language to make it more clear. Ie. 75% damage for five seconds vs. (with 2.0 attack speed) 750% damage over 5 seconds.

I'm glad they adopted the philosophy of buffing weak skills to be stronger rather than nerfing strong skills.

I might actually play again for a bit when 1.0.4 hits.

Hmm.

Unofficial Patch 1.0.4 Changes - Class changes, New Items, Affixes and More!! - News - Diablo Discussion and Community Forums - DiabloFans.com

Is it me, or are these buffs a little too late? It's nice that most skills got buffed, but pretty sure it wont get the majority of players back. They fucked up at launch, basically. The only chance they have now, is the PvP patch, but I doubt even that will make a big dent.

My friends list was full on launch...everyone played that game for weeks, months even. In the rare chance that one of them does come online now, it's always WoW.

Yeah I played for three weeks. Probably played D2 for like 5 years.

Biggest disappointment for a franchise in the history of gaming. Probably made the game in one year even with the long wait after the godly Diablo 2. Why do you remove almost everything that worked well in D2? Shouldnt you be expanding upon it? NOPE not Blizzard.

Hard to believe they can put out stellar WoW and SC2 and then release this.

Unofficial Patch 1.0.4 Changes - Paragon Levels, Skills and Legendary Passives - Diablo 3 Database (D3DB)

List of the new new Legendary passives, items, skill changes and Paragon Levels

Gamers are fickle. Look at the MW2 boycotts, the Sony boycotts after the PSN hack, etc. Ultimately if this patch fixes a lot of issues (which it looks like it does) people will come back. Torchlight 2 STILL not being out and Path of Exile's Open Beta being delayed also helps quite a bit here, since there's ultimately nothing filling this space right now. If they turn everything around and the game gets to where it should have been at launch a year from now most people won't remember or care how shitty it was for a few months, for better or worse.

Introducing the Paragon System - Diablo III

In-depth Paragon leveling system.

Ok, the Paragon system actually sounds interesting. This could be the first real, non-superficial improvement over Diablo 2 that this development team has managed to make.

Patch is coming tomorrow, see the absurdly long patch notes here: Scheduled Maintenance - August 21 - Forums - Diablo III

I'm only like halfway through the patch notes and this is fucking crazy. GAF is right, we're finally out of beta!

And here I was a few days ago thinking to myself, "Man, I'm glad I didn't climb aboard that boat."

I mean, I'm still kinda glad about it, but if they can keep the game fresh long-term...we'll see, I guess.

Patch is up. People on GAF are reporting way higher quality of drops, and Elites in general being way, way less fucked in general. GET EXCITE

I played for about an hour. Basically did an act 1 inferno farm run, plus Jailer through Butcher. I ended up getting about 3/4 of the way to my first paragon level and found a high quantity of yellows and blues, but I was also running with 200% base MF plus 5 stacks for most of it. Quality of my drops were better than usual, but nothing special.

Multiple people on GAF are already finding way better shit; same items as before, but with way better rolls and stats on them. Super jelly. I'll have to try to get back into this sometime this week.

I've noticed an increase in the amount of rares I've found as well. Plus it seems to be a bit easier to play as shit isn't killing me in two hits. Hopefully I can play and get some paragon levels under my belt and be a little more successful in the RMAH. Since next week the 5.0.4 patch hits WoW and then I'll be derping around on that

Act 3 is still rough, but I finally managed to kill Ghom (which I absolutely could not do pre-patch), but it still took me forever. I've started playing again, at least until Borderlands 2 comes out, so we should try to hook up. I'd imagine that we could at least get you as far as I am. Wasn't one of the things in this patch them removing enemy HP bonuses in multiplayer, or doing something with that?

Other than that I'm still having better luck rolling through Act 1 with my 200+ MF/GF gear then trying to do Act 2/3 with my "real" gear. Act 2 is kinda doable but a pain in the ass with my MF/GF gear, but I won't even touch Act 3 with that. Ultimately I'm getting way more rares doing Act 1 since I can do it so much faster, but the only downside is that most of the plans I would want for higher gems and crafting don't drop in Act 1 :/

Also with my DH I picked up a build that someone on GAF suggested which has been interesting so far. Instead of spamming Elemental Arrow (Lightning Ball) and Smokescreening anytime anyone gets near me, I've switched to Cluster Shot with the Rune where it drops grenades and does Fire damage. Then to up my Hatred regen to support that I've switched to the Bat (for 3 Hatred Regen/sec), and Entangling shot with the Rune that regens 6 Hatred per shot. I'm still on the fence about Entangling shot; with this setup being able to slow enemies is very useful, but it's slower and does less damage than Hungering Arrow. Also I dropped Caltrops for Gloom, with the Rune that blocks 65% of damage while it's active. So essentially I go into combat and with full Hatred I can get off two Cluster Arrows which will pretty much kill any normal mobs, and if it doesn't or I'm fighting Elites I'm regening Hatred like a motherfucker, and I pop Gloom which will allow me to tank maybe half of the Elites out there. And with Gloom active you get 20% of damage dealt back as health, so if I pop a Cluster Shot I'm doing 60k+ on normal and 130k+ on a crit so I'm healing fast. Then I still keep Smoke Screen for when that's not an option or it goes bad.

I'm still dying (that's the DH way), but this is a fairly interesting build. What the other guy is doing which supports this much better is he's got his natural crit chance at 30%+ and has max discipline + discipline regen with the Natalya set which makes all of that much easier. Additionally with his natural crit he can drop Sharpshooter and he picks up the Passive that reduces the discipline costs of the Cluster Shot grenades, and I think maybe ups their damage or something else as well. I'm not sure that I'm going to roll with this forever, but it is interesting. Without having his setup it's probably not quite as reliable as Elemental Arrow, but I'm doing HUGE bursts of damage in like 1-2 seconds. Also Entangling Shot is much more useful when playing in groups, so there's that as well.

So there's a major uproar going on with battle.net. Iran has blocked any and all access to battle.net from their country.

Iran's government banned battle.net's IPs

Thread about it.

A blue responded about it on the eu forums:

It was blocked because (taken from the above thread in MMO-C):


1. Promotion of superstition and mythology
2. Promotion of violence due to too much violence.
3. Abolishing the deformation in sin.
4. Demonstration of inappropriate clothing and slutty outfits for female avatars.

So what do you guys think of that? I know it's kind of a political thing and it probably belongs in the Palace, but since it's regarding Battle.net/Blizzard, I'd figure I'd put it in here.

Can't mess with Iranian law. Totally their call.

Also I hear Guild Wars 2 goes live today. Can totally imagine the playerbase of D3 going down a bit.

I play D3 every now and then, even with the major update (Paragon levels don't take my attention much). Finishing Darksiders 2, tackling GR:FS for a bit until Borderlands 2.

GW2 isn't that good. Massive let down for me. Fucking horrible community of players, and the game feels clunky.

It hasn't even been out a few hours and it's already that bad? I know it's early access for the next 3 days, when regular launch is the 28th. I suppose it's Warhammer all over again. In a rush to beat Blizzard's release dates, in turn putting out a rushed product. I wish EA would let Warhammer go free to play like they're doing with Star Wars, but meh.

One thing that you can do, because you have a legacy Nat's Mark, is wear four pieces of legacy Nat's set for the +2 disc/sec regen and replace the bat with Preparation with Punishment rune to instantly restore all hatred for 25 disc. Not much out there is going to survive four cluster bombs with some hungering arrows in between.

Yeah, the Nat set has more or less been my plan all along (although with some of the Legendary changes that may be different now), the issue is cost; a few of the pieces are super expensive.

Legacy Nat's is all pretty cheap except the ring, unless you start talking about getting critical chance on the hat and high dex on the boots.