Blizzard just finished airing a Campfire Chat that served as a mea culpa for the 1.1 patch which caused players to rend their garments and review bomb the game into oblivion on Metacritic. The nerf-heavy patch destroyed builds and made the game much more of a slog.
The end result of the chat was that a large number of changes are being made to the game, and promises are being made about what is coming, and what will not happen again. Here’s a list of everything Blizzard promised during the showcase.
- Most generally, they said they would not have a patch like this ever again, avoiding the kind of meltdown we saw here from the community. They get it, apparently.
- The overall goal is for them to make multiple builds able to succeed with each class, and as such, new items and powers will be added every season to make that happen.
- They promise that in the future when they implement huge nerfs, they will also do huge buffs to compensate for that, even if that means making some builds overpowered for a while.
- In the same vein, they say that they are okay leaving more OP builds alone, and they will instead focus on builds that are actually bugged to be doing huge damage (most recently Barbarian whirlwind, Druid shred and Sorcerer ice shards). But outlier, strong builds should be hit less often.
- The say that a new endgame activity is coming that will help give higher level players more to do other than just Nightmare Dungeons. No timeline on that yet.
- One thing they promised and already implemented is a nerf to Nightmare Dungeon difficulty, where now a level 100 dungeon feels like a level 70 one, as they admitted the higher ones were way overtuned. This doesn’t affect lower dungeons much, but from maybe 40 onward, you’ll start to feel the difference. This already was hotfixed in last night.
- Blizzard says they will communicate patch notes in advance, avoiding the kind of surprises we saw with this last patch, where changes were not announced until the patch was already live.
A number of changes are coming in patch 1.1.1 which should be here in less than two weeks, and details will be revealed in another chat next Friday. But the announced additions so far are:
- They will increase Monster Density in Helltides and Nightmare Dungeons.
- They will add another Stash tab to alleviate some inventory problems.
- Gold respect cost will be reduced 40%.
- Barbarians and especially Sorcerers will see big buffs coming in the patch.
As for future seasons, they are looking at overpowered enemies that kill players too fast like Corpse Bows, charging enemies or exploding-after-death enemies.
- They are looking at crowd control chaining as a chief thing that kills players too often.
- They mentioned loadouts are being considered, but nothing concretes on that front yet.
- They said that Uber Unique drop rates would likely increase eventually.
- They will circle back to old Aspects and Uniques and continue to buff them so they can become or stay relevant.
Those are the major points, and it’s all good stuff. I certainly wish things like Nightmare Dungeon nerfs or Sorcerer buffs were paired with the 1.1 patch itself, but changes are coming, and relatively quickly at that.
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