It's rambling time - time to cover many different aspects of what's going on in the beta.  What testers are talking about; what we like, what we don't.  It's all of the little changes in the game that are causing the most confusion, joy, consternation, and difficulty.  This report will be going all over the place, starting with...

Mercenaries and Uberdrops
My second report dealt with mercenaries and covered most aspects of them, but there's a few more things I need to add about their functionality.  There's something big that's holding them back - uberdrops.  An "uberdrop" is the items which are dropped when an act-ending boss is killed.  These tend to be of high quality, such as rares, sets, and uniques.  Well, there's one little problem with uberdrops right now.  If you have a mercenary who contributes even one iota to the death of an act-ending boss, the uberdrop is canceled!  You'll get one, two, maybe three regular magical items as a drop.  If Blizzard put so much work into making mercenaries a viable part of your character's workforce, why punish you for using them?  Jury's out as to whether or not this is a desired feature or a bug of some kind.  It relates to the new uberdrop system.  Act-ending bosses can be killed time and time again, and each time they'll give an uberdrop, whether or not they've been killed for a quest before.  This allows party players to freely kill act-ending bosses even if they've done the quest before; there's no longer need to pull back and let the player who hasn't beaten the quest finish the boss off as in classic Diablo 2.  However, once again, if anyone in the party has a mercenary along, you get garbage.

So what happens?  I think you can guess.  We all grab mercenaries to help clear out an act, but when it comes down to the finish, we all go hostile on each other and kill each others' mercenaries.  Stupid?  You bet.  Not only does it cost players a lot of money (high level mercs are very expensive to resurrect), it goes against the whole point of having these partners along.  In many cases, if you're playing a character that doesn't need a mercenary very much, you wind up not bothering with one.  It's too annoying to kill off your merc every time you want to take on an act-ending boss, an activity which has become quite popular around Battle.Net.  Since uberdrops now happen every time, the result is predictable: testers are going on "Meph runs" and "Andy runs," because those two act-ending bosses are the most accessible (no plot spoiler, but Baal isn't exactly the easiest guy to get to, heh).  Players get to Nightmare difficulty and kill Andariel over and over and over again, because she now drops more than just gems and is fairly easy to approach.  If it were my show, I'd go back to the old uberdrop system, because it's inevitable that eventually every public Battle.Net game will consist of players running to act-ending bosses and annihilating them as fast as they can to get their uberdrops and leave.  And with that, mercenaries should be allowed to the party without punishment; you think Sorceresses are going to play around with Duriel without a front-line mercenary along?  I wouldn't recommend it.

Mercenaries are fantastically useful and powerful in this game, but the current system punishes players too much for using them.  As a result, they simply won't get used at all, especially since in the Expansion Set, items are harder to come by (at least, so far), unless of course you're looking for...

Gothic Plates
It's become the running joke of this beta.  Something's gone terribly wrong with the way items drop, that's all anybody knows for sure.  Once you reach Act 5 normal, you are awash with Gothic Plates!  Gothic Plates to the left of you, Gothic Plates to the right of you.  Open a chest - Gothic Plate.  Kill a champion - Gothic Plate.  Kick an urn - Gothic Plate.  Crush Baal, saving the world - two Gothic Plates, yaaaay!  Move on to Nightmare difficulty.  Kill a zombie, Gothic Plate.  Open the special chest in the Mausoleum under Blood Raven's graveyard - Gothic Plate.  I think you get the idea.  Just so you know where those Gothic Plate jokes are coming from by the beta testers.  The sheer number of Gothic Plates boggles the mind - I have yet to see an Ancient Plate dropped by a monster, and have only witnessed three Full Plates drop the entire beta.  Go figure.

Dual Wield Fix?
Blizzard claims that they "fixed various bugs with skills that use two claws" in patch 1.45.  I still don't see it, however.  Dragon Claw still only uses one claw, evidenced easily by having poison damage on one claw and lightning on the other.  Put the claws one way, every monster attacked turns green.  The other way, every monster attacked gets sparks of lightning.  'Nuff said.  I was inaccurate in my report on Assassin claw attacks - it's the skills down the middle of the column (Pheonix Strike, Tiger Strike, and Cobra Strike) that never use both claws, while the elemental ones do work fine.  Lounge reader McFrugal chimes in with some information:

I believe that's because the left-hand side of the tree implies more than one attack (fistS, clawS, bladeS), while the 'Strikes do not.  Also, you may see something interesting if you decide to try the Assassin without any weapons at all.  FISTs of Fire works, while CLAWs and BLADEs do not. Strikes can be used with any weapon, including non-claws!  However, Dragon Claw can only be used with claws, so if you want to use a normal, non-class weapon, you'll have to use either normal attacks or kick attacks for your finishers.

Sets, oh My!
Sets are harder to get now, of course, since you can't gamble for them.  They're also much, much more useful.  Most beta testers, myself included, are raving over the Sigon's Set.  It's the easiest one to get your hands on (read: it drops more frequently), and it's popular for a couple of reasons.  In the Expansion Set, sets now start giving bonuses quickly.  Some sets give bonuses right from the second item on up; it's no longer the "get every item in the set and get a bonus" system.  Take a look at what three items of Sigon's are doing for my werebear Druid right here.  The Sigon's Set lists bonuses in the color of unique text for the set, and bonuses given by each item in green - so the gauntlets give me greatly increased attack speed, the belt gives me +2 DR per character level, the armor gives me attacker takes damage of 20, and then the set bonuses are 10% life steal and +100 DR.  And that's from only three items in the set.  Obviously the most loved bonus is the greatly increased attack speed on the gauntlets, something that almost any melee character would slobber over.  Especially a werebear Druid, whose attacks are notoriously slow.  It's taking time for peoples' attitudes to change about sets, since we're used to ignoring only those special set items that stood out on their own, such as Sigon's Guard.  Don't throw those set items out now, give them a chance.  They are, in fact, usually much better than rares.

The Shapeshifting Druid
I've now played through normal and some nightmare with a bear Druid and a wolf Druid.  Their difference is stark, so the decision between the two has to made early.  The wolf is all about speed and AR; the bear is all about damage and defense.  The challenge with the wolf is obtaining enough DR to keep yourself from being horribly slaughtered no matter how many hit points you have (you'd be amazed at how quickly 1000 hit points can get blown away), while the challenge with the bear is obtaining enough AR to even hit anything.  Druids get speed bonuses for using certain kinds of two-handed weapons, axes and polearms in particular.  Nice touch, since those are the weapons generally ignored by all of the other players.

With the wolf, speed is his game.  Obtaining a +50% speed increase is easy with a handful of skill points into his wolf morphing skill.  I found it to be a little misleading, however.  The speed boost isn't directly applied to your weapon - what I mean is that if you take your swing speed while in human form, it will not be increased 50% when you morph.  Why?  Well, when you shift into wolf or bear form, your attack speed is reduced.  Then it's sped up for the wolf attack.  So, you're slowed down and then sped up.  Uh...made me scratch my head, yes.  The overall effect is faster than human form, yes, but compare that attack to an Assassin's with equivalent Burst of Speed level boost, and it's no contest.  I found myself disappointed with the "speed" of the wolf.  Since it has no defense bonus to speak of, the wolf's best defense is clearly its offense; he needs as much speed as he can get to ensure he strikes before being struck.  Get that Sigon's Set now.  His level 30 skill, Fury, is a Zeal equivalent and is impressive at leveling crowds.

The bear relies on tankhood to survive.  With slow attacks and one-at-a-time fighting, he's going to need high DR to stand around while being pounded on.  His morphing skill provides him with a +5% boost to DR per level - so the Barbarian still reigns supreme with Iron Skin at 10% per level.  However, the Barbarian can't match the Bear's hit points, plain and simple.  Nothing can.  With Oak Sage, especially, Druids can obtain thousands and thousands of hit points, and bears can even reach 8,000+ with the right skills and equipment.  The bear can't attack more than one monster at a time, however.  So don't expect to see bear Druids dominating the ladder anytime soon, despite their ability to withstand pain.  His definition of "crowd control" is either using the Shockwave skill or going with some minions to soften up troops.

I'd just like to make a quick comment on the elemental skills of the Druid here.  As a fellow beta tester stated to me most accurately: "there's no such thing as an arty Druid."  The Druid's elemental skills don't do enough damage in their prerequisites, forcing you to rely on the level 30 skills alone.  The two level 30 skills, Hurricane and Armageddon, are powerful and deadly, yes, but they come with a catch: they have a fixed radius of 5.3 yards around your character.  That means, no "arty," ever.  You have to get close to your enemies to hurt them with these spells, so if you're planning a summoning + elemental Druid, know that you cannot neglect things like vitality and blocking.  And remember that you can't use elemental skills and shapeshifting at the same time, so it's not like you could enjoy a rain of fire around your character while fighting as a bear.  Even if you cast Armageddon and then shift into a wolf or bear, the spell only lasts 10 seconds.  Then you'd have to shift out, cast again, and shift in again.  It could be done, and if you have enough mana steal, possibly that could be a form of crowd control.  It would be dangerous - shifting out of wolf or bear form in any battle situation is extraordinarily dangerous in higher difficulties.

Differences From January
I keep annoying those I play with by pointing out differences between the January build I played and the current one.  Sorry, folks, can't help it.  The Bloody Foothills, the first area you come to after leaving town, was truly insane in January.  Catapult fire has been reduced since then, and the demon imps which populated it have moved to later areas.  While it's now less of a shock to the system after leaving town, the difficulty of that first area has been lessened considerably. I think Blizzard makes up for it later on in spades.  Quest four is significantly harder now as well.  Quest two is still buggy, since apparently some people don't know how to run when they need to and get stuck (specifics removed for spoiler purposes).

The Modified Blocking Formula
Short and sweet, since version 1.45 of the beta:

Old formula: (2 * Block * (Dex - 15)) / (Level * 5)
New formula: (Block * (Dex - 15)) / (Level * 2)

So, the blocking's not nearly as bad as it was before, as character level has become less of a factor. While blocking still remains the only character ability in the game which gets worse as you level up (thus, counterintuitive), the system of requiring a dexterity investment to keep up your blocking is maintained. From report #1 about shield blocking:

<strong><u>Character Level        Actual Chance to Block</u></strong>
       10                      25.6%
       20                      12.8%
       30                       8.5%
       40                       6.4%
       50                       5.1%
    Above 50                    5.0% (minimum)

<strong><u>Character Level        Actual Chance to Block</u></strong>
       10                      25.6%
       20                      12.8%
       30                       8.5%
       40                       6.4%
       50                       5.1%
    Above 50                    5.0% (minimum)

That's what it looked like for a Necromancer wearing Sigon's Guard, a shield with 64% blocking for that character, assuming that the Necromancer never raised his dexterity beyond 25, the starting amount.  What does it look like for the new formula?

<strong><u>Character Level        Actual Chance to Block</u></strong>
       10                        32%
       20                        16%
       30                     10.67%
       40                       8.0%
       50                       6.4%
       60                      5.33%
       64                       5.0%
    Above 64                    5.0% (minimum)

<strong><u>Character Level        Actual Chance to Block</u></strong>
       10                        32%
       20                        16%
       30                     10.67%
       40                       8.0%
       50                       6.4%
       60                      5.33%
       64                       5.0%
    Above 64                    5.0% (minimum)

The decline in blocking is a little slower here.  Also, with small increases in dexterity, you can stay "above the curve" more easily.  For instance, that same Necromancer, with 50 dexterity, will have 22.4% blocking at level 50.  That's not bad for a non-melee character, and remember that charms and other items can be obtained to raise your dexterity if you'd rather not invest stat points on level ups.

Character Conversion
A common suggestion for players is to allow converted characters to redistribute their skill points.  I don't blame them for the suggestion, even though I disagree with it.  It's a simple fact that you will not be able to take that high-level character of yours, convert it to Lord of Destruction, and immediately take it for a romp in Hell difficulty Act V.  Go ahead and try if you like when the game's released.  Don't be surprised when you get plastered over and over.  The game's whole dynamic has changed.  Taking a cookie-cutter class out for a spin just won't work, because Blizzard purposely modified the game to increase the challenge for these cookie-cutters.  If you really want to keep playing that converted character, first play through Act V in normal for the quest rewards (they're worth it), then spend some time in Nightmare difficulty Act V.  You'll stock up on the new equipment which is vital to survival.  And, unless you're really asking for it, stay off Hardcore for a bit until you learn everything that's different, or that cold immune Duriel is going to really give you a shock (for example).  Well, enough for now.