Well it only takes 8 months, but pvp will be coming...

[Archon_Wing]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8414560/

I'm really glad they bothered with putting in dueling, as arena would be lame and not as fun as the previous d2 games.

Remaining changes are quite solid, and emphasize rewards and balance. And maybe a savior to crafting.

We also took the opportunity to modify the Ruby effect in weapons. At the moment, the Critical Hit damage bonus provided by the Emerald is a clear choice for anybody looking to do more damage with their weapon. The new tier Ruby is a significant bump up that should make it the preferred choice for those who favor attack speed over Critical Hit chance, or for those who use skills which do not benefit as much from Critical Hit such as Sentry and Hydra.

More balance thoughts.

We do think there are two clear areas where we can improve: making Monster Power available in Public Games, and increasing the XP bonuses for players in Inferno.

That's good too, but exp isn't the factor here-- the drops need to be improved at high MPs

We've adjusted the Reflects Damage mechanic. Monsters with this affix will now pulse a damage reflection shield on and off. While the shield is down, the monster does not reflect damage. When the reflect shield is on, the monster will Reflect Damage the way it does now on live. The shield has a strong visual associated with it so you’ll know it is reflecting. (We’ve also made it so that pet damage is no longer reflected back to the player.)

Intuitive mechanics ftw?

We're also increasing the base pickup radius by a small amount. The intention here is to ensure that players who are actively trying to pick up a piece of gold are able to get it. The current radius felt just slightly too small, such that even when you ran quickly past a piece of gold on purpose, you would sometimes fail to pick it up. We still want a meaningful pickup radius to be a gearing choice, so the buff to the base pickup radius is modest. Many players may not even notice. For those who are very meticulous with health globes, the new radius is still small enough that you can avoid picking up a health globe in melee range if you so choose.

Well, this goes without saying.

These are good changes, though I feel there needs to be more infernal-like events to really get going.

[FireIceTalon]

Ah, there maybe some hope for PvP afterall! 1-on-1 dueling system is vital to have - this is what made PvP so much fun in the first two games. But having the option to FFA or do team duels is a must also. The other changes look promising - my Wiz could use a bit more attack speed (2.4 isnt bad but id like to get around 2.7) and get more crit dmg on my jewels rather than have the bulk of it coming from my wand. Overall, sounds like patch 1.07 is going to be pretty good. I still think Reflect Damage should be removed from the game though - it's a cheezy mechanic that punishes high DPS players by design. Why should I be punished for making an awesome char?

[Occhidiangela]

Digging back into semi-deep memory, F.I.T., I seem to recall similar questions from the player community about Iron Maiden (D II) that mirror the point you make in re Reflect Damage.

When all was said and done, the last version of D II / LoD ended up removing IM from the Chaos Sanctuary. Given that DPS is such a requirement on character builds in D III, that feature is almost counter-intuitive.

My gut feeling is that your position reflects how most of the player community feels. (I can't support that with data).

This then leads me to ponder what Blizzard's design team "learned" from the D II experience.

[Archon_Wing]

It seemed like they wanted to make Diablo 3 far different from D2. It went too far, I'd say.

Reflect Damage was supposed to be paired for enrage timers to punish imbalanced builds. However, they are both gear checks and with one almost gone, the other should weakened as well at least.

But it's fine. The community with all its flaws seems to be reteaching them, and for the better.

[Aahzmadius]

I'm skeptical that this will make crafting significantly better. Without a way to choose mods, I suspect I'll still be investing my time in Act 3 at MP0 (or maybe 1 now). Time will tell.

[Aahzmadius]

I haven't done any testing on the PTR (and don't have any plans to do so) but reading the patch notes was interesting. AW, what do you think of the monk changes? I'm glad Sweeping Wind got a boost. I'm thinking about playing around with Wave of Light as a spirit spender (replacing Blinding Flash). I'm surprised they didn't do anything to boost other spirit generators since FoT:TC is such a widely-used skill. I laughed when I saw that they increased the damage on Dashing Strike: Right! The reason I'm not using Dashing Strike is the DAMAGE is too low-brilliant, Blizzard! I was also disappointed that no passives changed. It's still hard to find a third one that is really good. That's a big contrast to the witch doctor where there are like 7 great ones. Of course, maybe if Wave of Light is really improved the extra spirit generating passive will be a good choice.

Time will tell.

[FoxBat]

Sweeping wind apparently no longer "snapshots" your damage when you first create it, instead constantly updating with each reapplication. That's why the value was boosted slightly, this is kind of a nerf in a sense. Which is OK as the skill is plenty strong. Might get blinding light off some people's bars now.

As much as they keep boosting other stuff, trying to keep up with overawe is just a losing battle IMO. Well aside from tempest rush, that was already a build and I don't know why it had to be made doubly as strong...

[FireIceTalon]

A friend of mine, whose main is also a Wizard, played public 1.07 beta patch and dueled against a variety of opponents. The consensus so far seems to be that WD is the strongest PvP class (their spiders supposedly do huge dmg and there seems to be no skill to slow them down at all), and Barb the weakest. Archon Wing will be pleased to hear that Monk seems to be one of the better classes to duel with as well - very mobile with the ability to reach opponents quickly and beat their brains in

As for Wizard, they appear to be somewhere in the middle, but somewhat difficult to use. My friend said they are quite fragile, and you have to get really creative if you are facing a strong and fast opponent, especially one who knows what they are doing. Lightning damage seems to be the most effective in terms of overall output (yep, hydra does work vs players), but because of the Wiz's fragility you have to use quite a few non-offensive skills in your build. Something similar to the following was used by a number of Wizzy's:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...Zdh!ZZYabZ

vs a more agile class like a Monk, the use of Slow Time could be a wise choice I'd think, possibly throw in Diamond Skin somewhere in there too (possibly instead of teleport). Storm Armor is the clear choice here for conjurations, though Shocking Aspect and Scramble are probably viable alternatives to the Thunderstorm rune. You might be able to forego the use of Unstable Anomaly as a passive and use Glass Cannon or Evocation instead, if you are really good at avoiding incoming damage.

[Frag]

I have to say, I actually feel like playing a monk now. Before, every time I went to level mine I'd remember that to be optimal I'd have to snapshot and play something else. Cool.

[FireIceTalon]

I wanted to work on my barb after my wiz reaches paragon 100, but I never seem to find good barb items. Plenty of nice dex stuff though, and since I just can't get into the DH, building my monk might be next for me also. WD possibly, since I already have lots of good intelligence gear on my wiz and I could just switch the items back and forth between those two, save a couple slots. All this is in the distant future though, my wiz is still only paragon 36 and I want to finish her before I start focusing on other chars.

[Athenau]

Monk changes are a start, but I think it's a very lazy way to balance the class. Just pumping the damage doesn't make it fun to play even if it's "balanced" numerically. The slow spirit generation really makes it feel like a slog. Fundamentally the monk has three problems:

1. Spirit can only (by and large) be generated by your spirit generators.
2. Spirit regen affixes don't scale at all (as opposed to resource on crit), have no synergy with other stats, and generally provide unimpressive gains.
3. All utility costs spirit to use.

Compare that to everyone's favorite class, the barb:

1. You can generate tons of Fury from Battle Rage/Into the Fray. At higher crit levels your fury spenders can pay for themselves. Getting hit gives you fury. Hitting breakables generates fury (and can proc into the fray!). Everything flows together smoothly.
2. More crit boosts both your damage and your resource generation by a large amount.
3. Most utility is cooldown based (and balanced around that cooldown) and _generates_ fury instead of costing it.

Overall it's the barb that feels like the mobile, active class rather than the monk. As a barb I'm always generating and dumping fury, fury feels like a fungible resource as opposed to spirit which I have to carefully husband and dole out in miserly doses.

I'm not really interested in PvP TBH. The game is, and always will be, a horrible PvP game. Popping your invincibility skill and seeing who can burst the other guy down first is dumb, but not something you can really fix without a wholesale rebalance.

[Aahzmadius]

Good comments on Spirit vs Fury. If I may, I'd like to add another fury generator: Superstition. I switched over to it not only for the elemental resists boost, but also the passive fury generation. I LOVE plagued elites now, since I can just stand next to them and hammer away without interruption. I was actually glad to see that 1.07 is boosting the plagued damage because you really shouldn't WANT to see a mod on an elite pack.

[FireIceTalon]

Good comments on Spirit vs Fury. If I may, I'd like to add another fury generator: Superstition. I switched over to it not only for the elemental resists boost, but also the passive fury generation. I LOVE plagued elites now, since I can just stand next to them and hammer away without interruption. I was actually glad to see that 1.07 is boosting the plagued damage because you really shouldn't WANT to see a mod on an elite pack.

yea that and electrified aren't very threatening traits as of now, and you know they need some sort of a boost when you are laughing at mobs that have them.

Fire dmg attacks have the opposite problem - they are OP. Molten and desecrator hit like fuggin' trucks, and the former is especially bad if combined with reflect damage. I know reflect dmg is getting the nerf hammer, but I still see no point to having this trait in the game other than to punish high dps players.

[Athenau]

Electrified is actually really dangerous on hard hitting enemies. The charged bolts are a non issue, but it also adds a LOT of lightning damage to their attacks. Don't underestimate that modifier.

[FireIceTalon]

Well, there are some monster types that are just really dangerous even in their normal base, so when they spawn as elites they are a formidable opponent regardless of which affixes they have. Heralds of pestilence and blood clan occultists come to mind. Relatively speaking though, electrified is not one of those traits that sends a signal off in my head telling me to be extra careful. Certainly not in the way molten, arcane sentry, or reflect damage do - these are mods that require you to pay extra attention and awareness when approaching combat. Molten and arcane are especially dangerous together, or if they are paired with an a crowd control mod like jailer, waller, vortex or fast. And reflect damage is ALWAYS dangerous (unless your dps is puny). If you have pretty decent lightning resistance, you can mitigate the dmg of electrified to the point where its almost a non-factor in most cases. But high fire resistance isn't always a barrier between survival and death when facing molten or fire chains - the same is true for arcane resistance vs sentry as wel, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.