Tag: Diablo
Public Test Realm Patch 1.0.5 Release Notes For Diablo III!
Wow! Public test realms and Beta’s OH MY! If you’ve had itchy clicking fingers and have been foaming at the mouth thinking abut the next patch, patch 1.0.5 look no further!
You can now play it live on on the Public Test Realm! I have previously wrote article about some of the sneak peek items that I’ve been discovering on the Blizzard website. If you missed those articles, you can find them here and here.
The one thing that I think is absolutely brilliant, and I must say, that I don’t use those words often; is that as the test realm is updating the patch notes as things are changing.
You can find the full release here. and start twitching with anticipation.
Diablo III Brings Back “Player 8″ As Monster Power Levels! Here’s How to Enable!
For those of you that read any of my previous articles, see here, and here.
There I describe the beauty of being able to freely control a games difficulty!
Blizzard did something amazing and is bringing that function back for those of you that remember if from Diablo II. Below are the simple and easy steps to enable the game changing setting.
This is taken directly from Diablo3.com, and you can find the article here.
Similar to the “Players X” command in Diablo II, Monster Power is a system designed to give players more control over how challenging enemies are in each difficulty.
Step 1: Open up the in-game Options menu (default: Esc) and select the Gameplay tab.
Step 2: Check the box next to “Monster Power” to enable it.
Step 3: Open up the Quest Selection window.
Step 4: Select your designed Monster Power level from the drop-down box near the bottom of the window, under “Difficulty Setting.”
Step 5: Once you’ve set your Monster Power level, quest, and difficulty, click “Select Quest” to confirm.
Step 6: Enter game and profit!
“No Monster Power” is the default setting. Each Monster Power level will increase the health and damage of monsters, and in return players will receive scaling bonuses to experience (for heroes levels 1-60) as well as boosts to Magic Find and Gold Find (for heroes in Inferno) which will stack above the 300% cap. The option to increase Monster Power will be available to all players starting at level 1 and can be adjusted separately for Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulty.
(Note: If you join a multiplayer game, you will adopt the Monster Level of the party leader. When you leave the party, your Monster Power level will automatically revert back to your previous setting.)
Now don’t get all excited and start trying to do this in your game window, and then call me a liar, because this feature is currently only available in their test realm. But, don’t you worry your pretty little self, this is going to be included in the patch version of 1.0.5
Diablo III – First Person To Paragon Level? Pretty Sure They’re a Virgin.
Soooo, if any of you remember an earlier article posting about the Paragon System which launched with the last patch, someone actually hit that cap…
ALREADY!
For those of you that don’t know how much extra XP (experience points) you need to hit that level, let me break it down for you.
To get to the original level cap of level 60, which much of us have already reached, it would take 23 million XP
To pass the next 100 levels of the Paragon System you will need over 3 billion XP
For a visual reference:
Level 60 : 23,000,000 XP
Level 60 + 100 Levels of Paragon : 3,000,000,000 + XP
THAT’S A TON OF TIME WASTED.
When Diablo III first came out, people spent TONS of time playing this, to the point where a french company offered to send free vibrators to people if they sent a picture of them and their significant other playing the game.
Don’t believe me? Here is the link
Lastly, for your viewing pleasure, here is the list of his current gear.
From what I’ve heard, they used a different set of gear for leveling.
Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.5 Preview
Hot on the heels of the latest patch comes news of the next patch! Next patch? Why wouldn’t they want to fix a still broken system?
What is the issue that Blizzard feels is so pressing this time around? CC! What is CC you ask? For those of you that have never heard of that term, it is short for “Crowd Control.” And will be referred to as CC for the duration of this article. Also if you are a noob it would behoove you to learn this term.
For those of you that are lazy, like myself, here is a definition of the term provided by Wikipedia:
Crowd control (also called CC) is a term used in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG)s and MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games to refer to the ability to limit the number of mobs actively fighting during an encounter. It can also refer to abilities that influence or prevent the abilities or actions of other character(s). Crowd control can be extremely powerful, controlling the possible outcomes of an encounter, as it forces opponents to use a smaller set of abilities/actions. Players use crowd control to create offense/defense ratio imbalances between themselves and their opponent(s); used properly, CC often renders an opponent nearly useless, allowing the CCer to use abilities/actions against an opponent without fear of retaliation or response. In a group setting, crowd control often makes combat safer, easier, or viable.
Now, “Once upon a time” (pay attention to this). On paper, most of the changes are usually welcomed, but when someone actually gets to playing the game, the changes do not always have the usual “shine” that they have when they are described.
With that being said, this change looks great on paper, but when the patch in it’s entirety is announced, as well as all of the changes are released, we’ll know how excited to be.
Here are the actual facts from Blizzard’s Developer Journal on the Crowd Control Changes coming in patch 1.0.5
Here’s the system we arrived at:
How It Works:
Monsters have a “CC resistance” that is stored on a per-monster basis.
The CC resistance starts at 0%. For every 1 second CC that is applied to the monster, the monster receives 10% CC resistance.
Monsters lose 10% of their CC resistance every second that they are not CC’d.
Elite monster CC resistance is capped at the current reduction values already active for Elites. In other words, CC resistance on most Elite monsters is capped to:
35% in Normal
50% in Nightmare
65% in Hell
65% in Inferno
What This Means For the Player:
From a high level, diminishing returns are applied on consecutive stuns to reduce their effectiveness.
You will never get an “Immune” message due to diminishing returns.
Diminishing returns on Elite monsters cap out at the same values that are currently applied to Elite reductions.
As previous mentioned, this means that near-infinite CC strategies will still work. We’re okay with these strategies remaining viable, as we love how powerful it makes players feel. (That said, we will continue to keep an eye on these strategies and may make some changes in the future if we feel it will be better for the health of the game.)
If two players are in a co-op game, the order in which they apply their stuns doesn’t generally matter, so you shouldn’t feel totally “screwed over” by the other person applying their stun before yours.
A character using only the occasional CC every 10-15 seconds will always get the full duration in all difficulty levels.
Let’s provide some examples to show how this new system can play out in real scenarios.
Example 1:
A wizard freezes an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty for three seconds using Frost Nova. The monster is frozen for the full 3 seconds and now has 30% CC resistance (+10% resistance per second for 3 seconds = 30% CC resistance).
The moment the freeze ends, a witch doctor casts Horrify which fears the monster for 4 seconds. Since the monster has 30% CC resistance, it’s actually only feared for 2.8 seconds (4 seconds * 70% CC effectiveness = 2.8 seconds).
The monster now has 58% CC resistance (30% from the first 3 second freeze + 28% from the 2.8 second fear).
After 5.8 seconds (freeze + fear duration), the monster is no longer CC’d. Suppose nothing happens for 5 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 50% of its CC resistance and is now at 8% CC resistance (58% – 50% = 8% CC resistance).
A monk casts Blinding Flash, applying a 3 second blind. The monster is blinded for 2.76 seconds (8% CC resistance off of 3 seconds) and the monster now has 35.6% CC resistance (which we could round off as necessary).
Example 2:
A monk with the Pandemonium rune is in Nightmare difficulty and casts Seven-Sided Strike on a single enemy, resulting in a lot of possible 7-second stuns.
The first hit stuns the monster and lasts for a full 7 seconds, but adds 70% CC resistance.
The second hit also successfully stuns the monster, and lands 0.4 seconds later after the first hit. The 70% CC resistance is lowered to 50% because the game is currently on Nightmare difficulty, and Nightmare difficulty has a CC resistance cap of 50% — so the stun is 3.5 seconds long. The 3.5-second stun gets applied, even though it is fully redundant with the existing 7-second stun. Since the new stun is shorter than the amount of time left on the current stun, no additional CC resistance is added. In effect, this second stun has no effect at all..<
Example 3:
A party of four monks attempts to stun-lock an Elite monster in Inferno difficulty. They are all using Blinding Flash with the Self-Reflection rune, which blinds an enemy for 4 seconds.
The first monk casts Blinding Flash and the monster is blinded for 4 seconds. It also now has 40% CC resistance.
The second monk also casts Blinding Flash, but times it to land the instant the first one ends. It lasts 2.4 seconds and increases the CC resistance to 64%.
Both blinds wear off 6.4 seconds later. The third monk lands his Blinding Flash immediately afterwards, which lasts 1.44 seconds. This increases the monster’s CC resistance to 78.4%.
It’s now been 7.84 seconds, and the fourth monk wants in on the action. She uses her Blinding Flash. Even though the monster’s CC resistance is technically at 78.4% by now, it’s capped at 65% because of the CC resistance caps in Inferno. So, the 4 second blind actually lasts for 1.4 seconds.
This adds another 14% CC resistance, bringing the final to 92.4%. (The effective resistance is still at the 65% cap, but the 92.4% is tracked under the hood for the stun resistance to wear off.)
The poor monster has now been blinded for a total of 9.24 seconds, and the monks are out of Blinding Flashes. 
The next blind will occur when the first monk’s Blinding Flash comes off cooldown. Since Blinding Flash has a 15 second cooldown, and only 9.24 seconds have passed, the party has to wait for another 5.76 seconds. During this time, the monster loses 57.6% CC resistance, leaving it at 34.8%.
The first monk uses his Blinding Flash as soon as it comes off cooldown. The 4 second blind is reduced to 2.61 seconds thanks to 34.8% CC resistance, and the monster’s CC resistance goes up another 26.1% to 60.9%.
Example 4:
Scenario 1
Player 1 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 1 second. Monster has 10% CC resistance.
Player 2 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 5.4 seconds. Monster now has 64% CC resistance.
Scenario 2
Player 1 applies a 6 second stun, it lasts 6 seconds. Monster now has 60% CC resistance.
Player 2 applies a 1 second stun, it lasts 0.4 seconds. Monster now has 64% CC resistance.
(Scenario 1 & 2 demonstrate that this system allows consecutively chained CC effects to be applied in any order. In other words, the math is commutative.)
I would like to think I’m just as good as the average person at math, and I like knowing exactly what is changing; I’m sort of a control freak like that, but seriously. That explanation was pretty dry and I wanted to poke my eyes out by the end.
I really hope the actual game play after this patch isn’t as dry as the patch notes imply.
End of story, now F**** off.
Blizzard Security Update! At Least They Admit They F’d Up
So, Blizzard finally admits that they have been hacked! I’m sure that many of you knew about previous issues that occurred during the RMA (Real Money Action House) preparations, where peoples’ accounts were hacked.
I, myself, even fell victim to hacking.
Now, even after all of the statements that Blizzard has made about being unhackable, and all of the extra measures that they’ve taken with “authenticators” and other devices, Blizzard was still hacked.
It would have been nice to see an email from Blizzard hit my inbox to alert me of this issue that was going on, but instead I had to find out about this from Kotaku, PC Gamer, Gizmodo, and generally every other website in the whole world, except Blizzard itself.
Here is the full release below take from their webpage here.
Important Security Update
Players and Friends,
Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.
At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.
Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.
We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password. Please click this link to change your password. Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well.
In the coming days, we’ll be prompting players on North American servers to change their secret questions and answers through an automated process. Additionally, we’ll prompt mobile authenticator users to update their authenticator software. As a reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and understand you may have questions. Please find additional information here.
We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.
Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
How To Be Invincible in Diablo III – Use It Before Hot Fix, Not My Fault If You Are Banned.
To sum up how I sometimes feel in harder difficulties grinding through with specific charactors, namely the Wizard you can watch this video, curtesy of Brumac, one of the more interesting game reviewers that I currently watch.
Now, to counter the problem with having your Wizard or Barbarian that feels like a limp noodle, much like a, well you get the picture. Here are the details:
Step 1: Select Teleport – Fracture. Bind it to a key
Step 2: Select Archon, tested with Improved Archon
Step 3: Hover your mouse over or near your charcter
Step 4: Press Teleport
Step 5: QUICKLY(!) Press Archon
Now the above steps are only for the Wizard class, and it will give you a limited skill set available, but who cares? You can run into Super unique mobs and just stand there and say, “Oohoohoh shit. I got you good, you fucker!” (click the link if you don’t know where the quote is from)
You’re probably sitting at home in your undies thinking to yourself, “Wait, didn’t he say Barbarian and Wizard?”
Why yes I did!
Here are the steps for the Barbarian class.
1. Have Furious Charge with Dreadnought Rune
2. Charge into opening cinematic (before it begins)
The above steps don’t make you specifically invincible, but it will, however return 8 percent of your hp with every successful hit on an enemy. In my book that’s as close to invincible as needed.
Now, while I don’t exactly condone the cheating aspect, or the fact that using the above mentioned tactics could possibly make it easier for you, said reader, to earn money on the auction house, what I will say though is that doing the above actions could get the ban hammer thrown at you.
Blizzard has stated previously. ”We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, bots, or exploits”
Community forum manager Zarhym has stated,
“We recently issued a round of account suspensions and bans to several thousand Diablo® III players who were in violation of the Battle.net® Terms of Use for cheating and/or using botting or hacking programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play that’s essential to everyone’s enjoyment of the game, botting, hacking, and other such exploitive behavior can contribute to stability and performance issues with the Battle.net service. As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and fun online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we’ll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed.”
So, will using the steps outlined may or may not get your banned, but it’s up to you to make the call, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Korean Diablo 3 Consumers May Have Refund Option
Server issues and connection problems plaguing Diablo 3 has prompted Blizzard to offer a refund to players in South Korea after much prodding from a Korean consumer protection agency.
On the official South Korean Diablo 3 website it was announced that unsatisfied players under level 40 can start applying for refunds on June 25. Furthermore, if anyone has purchased within 14 days and is level 20 or lower, they can return the game for a full refund.
South Korean consumer law states that consumers are due a refund if they purchase a product that doesn’t work through no fault of their own, and it's certainly well documented just how many issues Blizzard has had with the massively popular game.
Blizzard is doing this to comply with South Korean law, but don't expect this treatment in other countries. Most game publishers anticipate minor issues at time launch and hope for a "forgive and forget" treatment from players. Perhaps this will be the wake up call to make sure games are suitable for launch.
World’s First! Diablo III Hardcore Inferno Finished!
As the article title states, someone beat this crazy hard game in the hardest possible way. As he explains in the introduction to the video below, Canadian gamer Kripp wanted not only to be the first in the world to beat Diablo 3 on Inferno difficulty with a Hardcore character – i.e, flip your desktop and rip your hair out if you die – but to do it before Blizzard lowered the difficulty with Patch 1.0.3, which launched yesterday in the US and is currently being rolled out in Europe.
If you watch the video and haven’t gone through Act IV there will be spoilers, but hey, if you haven’t played Act IV yet, then what have you been doing lately since launch?
There was initially some confusion about whether Kripp and Krippi’s Diablo kill was in fact the first, but Blizzard community manager Bashiok has subsequently confirmed it in a tweet. “My apologies Kripp and Krippi” he said, “looks like you were 1st HC Inferno clear. (my spreadsheet deciphering isn’t what it used to be) Congrats!”
The Diablo kill takes around twenty minutes. What’s most impressive about this video is Kripp and Krippi’s ability to stay calm – even when Kripp’s barbarian gets knocked into Shadow Diablo’s cage trap/grab combo. “Don’t get cocky” and “run the f**k away” are stated over, and over again.
Congratulations to Kripp and Krippi, the amount of balls you have to do this battle, as well as how calm you guys were, you’re link ninja monks. It’s proof that cooperative gaming can be just as tense and exciting as multiplayer when the stakes are high enough – and the threat of losing a pair of max-level, uber-geared characters in front of an audience of thousands? Man it would have sucked if they didn’t make it.
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