I don't know if I should let this thread die gracefully, or post about the patch. I pick patch.
Patch 1.0.4 is looking like a series of system changes and buffs for every class. It'll go live at the end of this month.
General changes- no more averaging of MF and GF between all players in a party.
- "...We’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now."
- Normal monsters will get slightly more health, and elite and unique monsters will have 10-25% less.
- Invulnerable minions are going to go. Other affixes, such as fire chains and shielding, are getting changed to make them less frustrating.
- "Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63."
- New set of stronger affixes for two-handed weapons.
- Elites and such will lose enrage timers and won't heal back to full.
- Repair costs of high-end items will go down by 25%.
Legendary item improvements- A little over 50 legendary items have had unique abilities added. You should probably just visit the page to see examples, but, for example, Fire Walker boots will now leave a trail of fire behind you.
- Legendaries seem to have gotten a general boost in raw stats.
- Basically, legendary items are now meant to be cool and interesting rather than annoying and disappointing to find.
Character skills
- The main goal here seems to be to improve unpopular skills, where unpopular presumably means "currently gimped". It looks as if their approach to this is to improve the damage on everything no one uses, except in the case of witch doctor pets, which are now looking pleasantly tanky.
- The following are examples.
This is not an exhaustive list of changes. Patch notes are not available yet.
Barbarian-
Bash deals 165% damage, up from 150%. It also generates 8 fury instead of 6.
- No hard numbers for
Cleave yet, but they say they're going to up the damage and increase the proc coefficient.
-
Hammer of the Ancients went from 200% damage to 325%. Rolling thunder (that's a rune for hammer, right?) went from 155% to 275%.
-
Rend went from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5. Lacerate went from 271%/3 sec to 903%/5 sec.
-
Whirlwind and
Seismic Slam get similar improvements.
- No changes for
Sprint or
Battle Rage. They like that build because it's weird.
Wizard- This one is vague and boring, compared to the barb's.
- They noticed that no one uses any form of
Hydra except venom, so they'll be, from the looks of it, roughly doubling the damage for every other hydra rune. No changes to venom.
- Vague reference to the fact that
Energy Armor is the clear best wizard armor skill, with the implication that they might do something about it at some point. Maybe. Man, I hope they change this one right now. I want my 20 AP back.
-
Energy Twister's proc coefficient got cut in half, because otherwise it would be much easier to trigger the proc effects of the new legendaries. People who want to keep using their Critical Mass build with wicked wind are going to need considerably more crit chance now. The repair cost reduction should makes things easier for them, at least.
- Unpopular signature spell runes are getting damage buffs. no numbers given.
- Base damage on
Meteor went from 200% to 260%. "Molten Impact damage increased from 260% +78% over 3 seconds to 390% + 90% over 3 seconds". "Meteor Shower damage increased from 80% to 104% for each smaller Meteor". "Comet damage (of initial hit) increased from 240% to 312%".
- Assorted
Arcane Torrent buffs. There are hard numbers in the article, but I care so little that I'm just going to move on.
Monk- They're "happy with where spirit generators are now".
- They've noticed that the vast majority of spirit spending abilities are pointless in later difficulties, and they intend to start fixing this in 1.0.4.
-
Exploding Palm went from 220% weapon damage over 3 seconds to 745% weapon damage over 9 seconds. Impending doom is now 15 seconds.
- No numbers for
Seven Sided Strike, but they sure sound cocky about the changes to it. I'm assuming some kind of huge damage increase. 7777% would be nice. Seems unlikely, though.
- Damage on
Wave of Light is up to 390% + 45% AoE, from the original 215%, with matching buffs for three of the runes. Still costs an arm and a leg.
- They're not too happy with the fact that
One With Everything is more or less mandatory, but they'll let it ride for now. No changes.
-
The Guardian's Path now gives +35% spirit generation with a two-hander, up from 25%.
Demon Hunter- Every hatred generator other than Hungering Arrow is getting a damage boost.
-
Rain of Vengeance is going from "75% weapon damage for 5 seconds" to "715% weapon damage over 5 seconds". Note the slight change in wording.
-
Sentry now deals twice as much damage.
Witch Doctor- Witch doctors in general get 45 mana per second, up from 20.
- Pets can now tank in every act of every difficulty, particularly if you build around them a bit. The exact changes are complicated, but hard numbers are in the article.
-
Vision Quest now does something a little different that I don't quite understand.
- No mention of Soul Harvest, which is a shame because that shit needs to go. Come on, Blizzard. Say something about the aggravating, dangerous and totally mandatory INT buff ball-and-chain.
Again, this isn't everything. The articles themselves are ultimately more about the philosophies behind the changes Blizzard are making in this patch, and the details I've listed here are just the examples they used to demonstrate how they're planning to carry out their goals.
We'll see how it plays out.
by Octavia (?) » Sun Jun 24, 2012 11:28 pm
This is how it feels when your highest-level character is on Nightmare Act II.
I even replaced right click with HEALING RAY OF THE SUN because crippling wave + vortex is good enough.
PEW-PEW-PEW
Friendship levels at 
Got my fuckin copy of this fuckin sweet ass game 
hahahahahaha