D2 1.13 Patch

[Hylandor]

It's finally released..... (test realm)

Very lackluster

Patch 1.13
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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...


Major Bugs

- Fixed an item dupe bug.
- Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.


Minor Bugs

- Uber Mephisto now checks for both Uber Baal and Uber Diablo to be killed before spawning summoned minions (Before he would only check for Uber Baal).
- The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the window loses and then regains focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in windowed mode when it lost focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window wouldn't center properly when it was created.

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.
- Increased the drop rate of high runes.
- Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).
- Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.
- Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.
- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.
- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.
- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.
- Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.
- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.
- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.
- Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.
- Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.
- When creating a single player game, pressing the 'Enter' key now automatically creates a Hell difficulty game if possible.
- When creating a game, each difficulty button is now bound to a unique key: Normal 'R', Nightmare 'N', and Hell 'H'.
- The 'Enter Chat' Button in the battle.net waiting room is now bound to the 'Enter' key.
- Added the windows system buttons to the game window (MIN, MAX, CLOSE).
- Added new command line parameter '-nofixaspect' which allows users to not fix the aspect ratio to 4:3 when maximizing windowed mode. This lets the game 'stretch' to fill your monitor.
- Added support for '-sndbkg' command line switch. This enables sound in background.
- Added support for '-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed' command line options.


Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes


Amazon

-Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of Explosion effect by 33% and Immolation effect by 50%.
-Immolation Arrow - Explosion effect damage increased by 20%.
-Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.


Assassin

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


Barbarian

-Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.
-Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.


Paladin

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


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.


Necromancer

-Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).
-Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.
-Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.


Sorceress

-Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of Firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.
-Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.
-Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.
-Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

[Kadian]

The respec would be nice since I always seem to screw something up...

Edit: I logged in and found all my characters were still there. I figured they might be gone, but they weren't, so I logged on with all of them to extend them... If anyone is playing this winter let me know, I could join up with you. (non ladder)

[Hylandor]

The "Mystery" challenge in the game supposedly gives you more respecs (beyond the 3 from quests)

They've made hardcore easier, however they did not address the biggest issue in the game (at least for hardcore players), which is tppk. A party member would cast in your direction frozen orbs, meteors, bone spears, guided arrows, tornadoes, etc and by utilizing a program, cast a tp, enter the tp and hostile you within a matter of .2 seconds. The spell which was cast easily kills you without you even realizing what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDGdswy1UWc

Lost a 85ish HC werebear and 83 HC pally to this in a baal run.

[shiram]

sadly patches doesnt remove douchy players

[Bane]

Still no shared stash!?!?! Seriously, it was alooot of players' major one spot for changes *sigh*

Not enough changes to motivate another install methinks. No new runewords or other items either, just a few balancing issues which won't really change the game play enouch to make me interrested unfortunately.

[shiram]

yea its meager, but not many develloppers would invest time and money in a patch for a nearly 10 year old game

[Hylandor]

Yea, the larger stash was going to be one of the major changes... and then they pulled it

[Kadian]

Yeah, I find that to be the most frustrating part of the game, if you could just transfer among your own characters without needing another person to sit in the room it would really help too...

[Bane]

It would also have made the whole battlenet run smoother since you wouldn't have to create a gazillion mule games all the time. This would prolly have cut down costs for bliz, so for them it would still have been a sound investment to actually do invest the time and effort of creating the shared stash.

To be honest, since I have no fun games to play, I could have come back just for that. Just to experience it, heh.. But now? Naah..

I wonder how many people still actively play DII online?

EDit: Btw, they doesn't seem to have adressed the issue with bots either? The nerfing of hammers may not be enough to stop all the enigma wielding hammerdin bots..

[Darius]

I think I'm gonna check it out. D2 in 1600*1200 sounds fun.

[Bane]

If you wanna play, I might just reinstall just to get a chance to play with Teh!!! BarbaGwad! Dariuszzz!!!

[Genie]

im playing again, babajong named Grymnir on USeast
Currently level 5

[Kadian]

I'm on east and I have lots of characters and lots of stuff, we should meet up some time, but I'm pretty buys through the holiday....