What's in 0.9.3?

I'm pleased with whats been said in the dev diary, quick question though. What's the interplay between the new +stat modifiers on gear and skill gems?

It'd blow to change gear and suddenly not meet the requirements for a gem because it leveled up prior. Would skill gem requirements be based on base stats/stats only earned on the passive tree?

I swear I had some other concern but I can't remember it. :/


EDIT:
Oh right, I'd say wiping over the legacy league idea. During the d2 median xl alpha there was a lot of issues - and so much Brother Laz rage - with people giving feedback using old (legacy) characters and items.

I would not be surprised if you get a lot of feedback based off of information from legacy league, without the poster stating what league it's from.

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omgmibu wrote:

Most of this looks great but I can't say I'm on board with the increased mana cost, being a proponent of lowering mana costs and fixing the broken flask system I still find a better idea. I just seem to think most people still focus on max damage over a wider variety of skills also.

Skills aren't costing more mana, are they? It's just support gems getting increased effectiveness (as well as increased cost)

The main problem with the flask system have been [at least partially] addressed already. The only thing left to fix in my opinion is the broken-ness of knockback on mana potions (particularly with surgeon's mods, but it will depend how easy it is to crit in .93)

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eSpyre wrote:

It'd blow to change gear and suddenly not meet the requirements for a gem because it leveled up prior. Would skill gem requirements be based on base stats/stats only earned on the passive tree?

That's a good point.
One way to deal with it would be custom setting of gem levels by the user as I remember talking about & suggesting in another thread once).

Controlling the skill gem level seems a little complex. Still this could grow into a big problem, if your character is 'forced' to hold onto stat gear. I mean the problem skill gem isn't going to stop leveling if it can do so.

The sensible method I'd suggest around controlling skill gems would be some skill gem level down/up grade orb. Was your idea anything like this Xapti?

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Xapti wrote:

Skills aren't costing more mana, are they? It's just support gems getting increased effectiveness (as well as increased cost)

You are correct based on what I read. Mana cost will increase even more now if you add too many support gems.

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The main problem with the flask system have been [at least partially] addressed already. The only thing left to fix in my opinion is the broken-ness of knockback on mana potions (particularly with surgeon's mods, but it will depend how easy it is to crit in .93)

My problem with the flask system is a direct result of skills costing 1/5 of the mana pool and which then causes the constant 1,2,3,1,2,3 which I feel is over spamming for something that was supposed to kill the potion spam.

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aaricia wrote:

regarding legacy leagues ...If it would make your job easier and may help get the patch out earlier .... why not just wipe the chars since for the purpose of testing the beta, it doesnt serve any purpose really. We are just keeping them for "sentimental reasons" ?

Wiping them would force people to actually do what they came into the closed beta to do ... which is to test the current version and give useful feedback. Not losing time playing outdated chars with no real value as to feedback and continuing development of the game.

Regarding people who think wiping is a good or better option (like this person appears), I don't think it's merited. The main thing that will be a problem, in fact pretty much only thing, is the economy which would maybe be a bit askew due to all the items which have unobtainable mods. some of these items are being re-rolled though, so the extent of that is probably pretty minor. The economy wouldn't even be too problematic even — it's not like this game has much of an economy or valuation system in place as it is anyway.

The reason legacy isn't automatically bad is because people can choose whether or not they want to use legit or illegit items. It gives players the chance who want to play legit and give the most useful feedback the chance to do so without having to re-level their character. Once they see how their high level character does, they can then level a new character and give feedback on it (without having to spend time getting such a character to as high of a level, which saves time).

Giving legacy league is essentially what gives us the respec. The respec is great because it allows people to immediately jump right into testing a new build at a high level, without having to waste all the time getting there. They can test different mechanics, and give feedback about the hardest difficulties. Obviously people who decide to use twinked gear won't be able to give as accurate feedback on some things. That said, they will still be able to give perfect feedback on other things.

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Torin wrote:

Things I am missing in this list:
1. Confirmation dialog when clicking on a new passive skill to prevent accidental clicking (especially since left click is used both for moving the skill tree and selecting).

2. Walls in dungeons and trees and high walls in outdoor no longer blocking player sight and leaving him to identify enemies only by mouseing over them to see their name/health bar. The game engine should absolutely never bring down efficiency of gameplay.

Good points. I especially want transparent walls when anything's behind it (although I'll make do with some sort of highlighting)

Other things I noticed that aren't mentioned and hence maybe not be in 0.93:
• Marauders/Witches/Rangers get more attribute points from passives right now when splitting passive points across two attribute types than the hybrid classes do (as long as they spend less than 50% of their passive points on that other attribute, which only makes sense).

• IMO str-int armor is still probably problematic, since generally one would want all ES (large buffer before taking damage) or all armor (for tanking — long fights, survivability, etc.). When both are combined, they do work together, but they don't work as well as if they were separate. If energy shield worked similar to immortal's shield in starcraft 2 (or moreso the opposite of how str works, where ES soaks up 80% of big hits, but only 20% of little hits) then that would be a good synergy with Str armor, since str armor will then not be as weak against big hits until the ES wears off.

• All hybrid armor suffer from the problem that magical mods which increase the ES/armor/evasion value only affect ONE of the values, even though the armor is split over TWO defense types. This makes this extremely common magic mod half as effective on hybrid armor (making hybrid armor rather weak/ineffective).

I thought I heard something about it being changed in the future, but I can't remember if that was the case (or even if it was said to be in 0.93 as opposed to later)


• Elemental attacks (and viper strike and poison arrow) viable throughout all levels. With regards to buffing them, it seems like they're in a situation where they will either be so good you don't need to invest into any damage passives (maybe only a bit of accuracy), or else not good enough since one would need to split points across two (or more) damage type increasers, or lastly (viper strike and poison arrow), can't even get enough ways to buff it's damage sufficiently.

Patch sounds great. Cant wait for testing it (:

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Chris wrote:

I posted this in the General Discussion forum also, but am including it here for completeness. Here's an article explaining what's in 0.9.3 and why we made those design decisions.

I am extremely impressed with the information you guys have provided us with about this patch.

I love all the changes.

I would however like to know more about the timeline for the 6th class and the enabling of pvp.

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BattleSmurf wrote:

I would however like to know more about the timeline for the 6th class and the enabling of pvp.

I'm not sure if they're revealing about the release date of the 6th class — people have asked the question before with no answer.

With regards to PvP, it will probably happen in the next week or 2, since it was enabled in a recent patch and I assume that the pvp will also be activated during that same patch (although I think it's pretty dumb to run PvP at this point, balance is just way too off)

Sounds awesome :)

Can I get an explanation how new armor will work. Will it now be a fixed number that will reduce damage taken by it's number?

How will new evasion work? How will accuracy work against evasion?