Real Life Highscore

Blizzard recently released the first of their series of developer blogs in the lead up to Diablo 3’s patch 1.0.5. This first blog covered the planned defensive skill changes. A lot of this looks like nerfs but before you get up in arms, take some time to get it all in perspective. Turns out we are getting an overall survivability buff, not a nerf!

The point of this patch is to make defensive skills less necessary across the board whilst opening up more options for offensive skill sets. By changing the importance of defensive skills many offensive skills are being indirectly buffed.

Just to reiterate in a different way: If you dont change your current defensive build you will be around 20% more survivable than you are now once the patch hits. This gives you room to drop one or two defensive skills or even some gear based mitigation without becoming more easily killed than you were pre-patch.

Class Changes Overview:

Barbarian

• War Cry is having it’s bonus resistances reduced from 50% to 20%. Keep in mind that this is in line with the overall nerf to monster damage.
• Leap (Iron Impact) is changing the way it works. It will now provide 100% extra armor per mob hit with the Leap.

Demon Hunter

• Shadow Power and it’s runes are having their intensity reduced but effective time lengthened. The effect of this should be to make the skill easier to use and less expensive.
• Some companions (Spider, Boar and Wolf) will be turning into actual pets with HP and the ability to tank damage for you.
• You will now be able to have two turrets up after a short cooldown. With the Custom Engineering passive you can have three!

Monk

• One With Everything may be getting a change. No specifics mentioned yet other than the change shouldn’t impact your gearing needs.
• Resolve damage reduction reduced by 5%.
• Seize the Initiative changed to grant 50% of your Dexterity as armor.

Witch Doctor

• Jungle Fortitude damage reduction lowered.

Wizard

• Energy Armor and Prismatic Armor reduced effectiveness.
• Ice Armor will now have a melee damage reduction.
• One familiar rune could be changed to offer life regeneration.

The overall goal of this patch seems to be to make Inferno the ‘challenge of efficiency’ that some people crave while the new ‘Monster Power’ and ‘Infernal Machine’ mechanics will provide the ‘difficulty challenge’ that other players crave. Which side of this fence are you on? The efficiency or difficulty side?