Diablo 3 Video: Massive Treasure Goblin Spawns

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For September 18

Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Tuesday, September 18th. Quoting from the Battle.net forums:

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, September 18th. Maintenance will begin at 3:00 AM PDT and is expected to last for 8 hours. During this time, all servers and many web services will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience.

Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Dev Journal: Patch 1.0.5 Defensive Skills Buff

A new developer's journal post has been added to the battle.net blog. The blog post explains why and how players defensive skills will be changed and what developers are doing to offset those changes to result in a defensive buff for Diablo 3's patch 1.0.5.

The basic layman's idea of what will occur is as follows:

1. Reduce the effectiveness of select defensive skills.
2. Reduce monster damage by more than the mitigation lost by these skills.
3. Putting both changes together, players actually take less damage than before

The post is an interesting read. For those interested in learning all the gory details you can read the full post here.

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.5 New Features

A new post on the battle.net blog offers a glimpse of what is to come in Diablo 3's patch 1.0.5. Some really cool and new features of patch 1.0.5 will include defensive skill enhancements, a new infernal machine event, and a new monster power system. The details of the post are as follows:

We’ll have articles in the coming days providing all the details on the upcoming patch, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek at what major features to expect.

Defensive Skill Changes
In our eternal quest to promote build diversity; we’ll be making changes to defensive skills across the board while simultaneously reducing incoming damage. The net result is a survivability buff for players, and an increase in build options as defensive abilities become less “mandatory.”

New Event: Infernal Machine
The Infernal Machine is a device that will allow level-60 players to battle “uber” versions of some of Sanctuary’s most nefarious bosses. While the rewards for defeating these bosses will be great, some assembly is required.

New System: Monster Power
Similar to the “Players 8” command in Diablo II, the Monster Power system is designed to give players more control over how challenging enemies are in each difficulty.

This and more is coming in Patch 1.0.5! Stay tuned for all the gory details.

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For September 13

Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Thursday, September 13th. Maintenance will begin at 5:00 AM PDT until approximately 7AM.

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.5 Character Class Changes

A lot of rumors have recently been flying back and forth over whether or not character classes will be nerfed in the upcoming Diablo 3 patch 1.0.5. Apparently word got out that someone had datamined the patch and many character classes were going to be nerfed. However, Blizzard has contacted some Diablo 3 fansites to let us know that some were too quick to jump to conclusions and that these patch changes were being taken out of context. Character classes will actually be benefiting from the changes and will get buffs not nerfs. Blizzard plans to release a blog post sometime in the near future to explain the details of these changes.

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Invisible Legendary Item Drops

 

Many players are having some difficulties in noticing legendary item drops. Due to the brown/orangish coloration of the drop, legendaries sometimes blend into Diablo 3's backgrounds and become almost invisible to players. In a recent forum post on the battle.net forums Blizzard addresses this issue:

We’re aware that some players have reported difficulties noticing Legendary item drops, and we’re working on some solutions to make them much more apparent. We do not anticipate that they will be hand-delivered by vibrantly-colored equines, however.

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Diablo 3 Speed: Power Leveling Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Character Classes Wallpaper

 

Diablo 3: Barbarian Wallpaper

 

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Diablo 3: Demon Hunter Wallpaper

 

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Diablo 3: Monk Wallpaper

 

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Diablo 3: Witch Doctor Wallpaper

 

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Diablo 3: Wizard Wallpaper

 

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Followers Getting A Strength Boost

Currently many players feel that the followers in Diablo 3 seem very weak. Aside from being somewhat useful as a crowd control meat shield, and providing some buffs for your character, there is no question that followers are definitely in need of an overhaul. The good news is that Blizzard has recently stated that they are currently looking into increasing the strength, survivabilty and usefulness of Diablo 3 followers. No word yet on if this will be a feature of the upcoming patch 1.0.5. However, in a recent post on the Battle.net forums Blizzard mentions that patch 1.0.5 will include more features than have recently been announced.

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

New Diablo 3 Shrines In The Works?

Blizzard has hinted at the possibility of adding new shrine types in Diablo 3 in a recent forum post on the battle.net forums. The possibility of adding enlightened shrines in inferno mode was also mentioned. The full post is quoted below:

We actually talked about introducing additional Shrine types in the future during a meeting we had earlier today. We’re also currently discussing the possibility of adding the Enlightenment Shrine into Inferno mode since the +XP bonus would be particularly appealing to players working towards their Paragon levels.
 

 Source: Battle.net Forum

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Stratey Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For September 11

 

 

Update: Todays scheduled maintenance was apparently canceled.



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Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Tuesday, September 11th. Quoting from the Battle.net forums:

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, September 11th. Maintenance will begin at 3:00 AM PDT and is expected to last for 8 hours. During this time, all servers and many web services will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience.
 

 Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.5 Crowd Control Changes

Some new changes to crowd control skills in Diablo 3 are being planned and will be featured in the upcoming release of patch 1.0.5. The development team has decided on creating some new rules to improve the diminishing returns of crowd control skills in the higher difficulty levels of the game.

The details of the current planned changes to crowd control skills are as follows:

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.

Source: Battle.net Blog

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Diablo 3 Speed: Power Leveling Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For July 31

Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Tuesday, July 31st, which will last for eight hours. Quoting from the Battle.net forums:

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, July 31st. Maintenance will begin at 3:00 AM PDT and conclude at approximately 11:00 AM PDT. During this time, all servers and many web services will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience.

Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Video: Demon Hunter Inferno Gear Budget Guide

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Hotfix Update For July 26

Here are the latest update notes for all the recently released hotfixes that occured this week. Note that both god-mode exploits have now been fixed.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed wizards to become permanently invulnerable.
• Fixed a health regeneration bug that occasionally affected barbarians when using Furious Charge.

Source: Battle.net Blog

Diablo 3 Video: Barbarian Skills - Revenge Explained

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For July 25

Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Wednesday, July 25th, which will last for an hour and a half. Quoting from the BlizzardCS twitter feed:

We will be performing rolling restarts for #D3 beginning tomorrow 7/25 from 5AM PDT until approximately 6:30AM.

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Invulnerable Barbarian Exploit

Amazingly, just after yesterday's invulnerable wizard bug, there is another exploit making the rounds, this time allowing for an invulnerable barbarian. Expect that this new exploit, like the last one, will be patched very soon. Until then, watch this video for more details.

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Invulnerable Wizard Hotfix

As we reported earlier, a new Diablo 3 exploit was recently discovered which allowed wizard characters to become invulnerable. Blizzard has posted a response on the battle.net forums and are currently patching the bug, which explains the current emergency server maintenance restarts.


Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Video: Tips For Defeating Siegebreaker Assault Beast

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Diablo 3 Speed: Power Leveling Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 God-Mode Invincibility Exploit?

Lately a lot of rumors have been going around about a new found exploit in Diablo 3 that allows players playing the wizard character class to become invincible. No doubt that, if the rumors be true, Blizzard is already taking measures to quickly patch the bug. Take a look at the video below to see the exploit in action.




Source: Gameranx.com

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Diablo 3 Upcoming PVP And Legendary Item Features

In a recent interview Blizzard's Jay Wilson talked some about Diablo 3's upcoming PVP features and changes to legendary items. The fine points of the interview are as follows:

Player vs Player

• PVP will occur as an arena style deathmatch.
• Players will be able to create a team of four characters to compete against an opposing team of four players.
• An automated match-making system will also be in place for team building for those players who need teammates.
• PVP matches will last for up to ten minutes.
• PVP mode will also feature an announcer.

Legendaries

• Legendary items are currently being upgraded.
• New loot technologies are being added to the game which will allow for some really cool new legendary item features.

Source: Gameranx.com

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Diablo 3 Billionaire Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Video: Arcane Cannon Inferno Wizard Build

Click To View: Arcane Cannon Wizard Build Skill Calculator

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Server Maintenance Scheduled For July 20

Diablo 3 servers are scheduled for maintenance downtime on Friday, July 20th. Quoting from the Battle.net forums:

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Friday, July 20th. Maintenance will begin at 5:00 AM PDT and is expected to last for 2:00 hours. During this time, all realms and many web services will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience.

Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Video: Tips For Defeating Ghom

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide

Blizzard's Mike Morhaime Addresses Diablo 3 Players

Blizzard's president, and co-founder, Mike Morhaim, has recently written a long post addressed to Diablo 3 players on the battle.net forums. The post, discussing the release and also the future of Diablo 3, reads as follows:

Dear Diablo Players,

Now that Diablo III has been out for two months, I would like to take a step back and discuss the launch, the feedback from the community, and talk about what the future holds for the game.

We’ve had an enormous amount of feedback since the launch. I speak for everyone at Blizzard when I say that we appreciate the passion and affection many of you have for the Diablo series. We truly believe “Every Voice Matters,” so I want to thank you for sharing your experiences in an effort to help us improve the game. Your support makes it possible for us to continue doing what we do, and we never take that for granted.

The launch week of Diablo III was memorable for many reasons -- some positive, and some not so positive. We were thrilled that Diablo III had the biggest PC-game launch ever, surpassing the lifetime sales of Cataclysm (the previous record holder for biggest PC-game launch) in a matter of weeks. We’ve been floored by the response.

However, the launch had many challenges as well. It has always been difficult to forecast how many players we will have. With World of Warcraft, it was a challenge to handle the immediate demand when we launched back in 2004, and that was just in North America. We eventually expanded to other regions and reached nearly 5 million players by the end of the first year, and there were a lot of growing pains with that. However, we’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game. For Diablo III, we looked at historical sales for Blizzard games and other top-selling PC games and watched preorder numbers. We even upped our estimates to ensure we had additional capacity, or so we thought. In the end, it just wasn’t enough, and that is something we will work hard to conquer for future releases.

In response to the immediate and overwhelming demand for the game, the team worked around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to our datacenters, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they sprang up. While things have by and large been running smoothly for several weeks now, various game-related issues have come up that we have either already responded to or are continuing to investigate (such as the latency issue some of you are experiencing) and make adjustments for. Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up. We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly.

We are not satisfied with breaking launch records; we want people to continue playing and enjoying Blizzard games for a very long time. The Diablo III team has made an epic, entertaining, and beautiful gaming experience. That being said, we know that it isn’t perfect. Our teams are working hard to improve the game balance, build on our design, and listen to what players are saying to make it the best game it can be.

You’ve seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you’ll see additional improvements with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Another topic we’ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. Patch 1.0.4 will also include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.

We’re also working on a number of interface updates, including social improvements that will allow players to more easily view their friends’ achievements, more quickly join games, and more efficiently communicate with each other. In addition, we’ll be making updates to the auction house in the future to provide players with better information through tooltips and notices, offer improved search functionality, and more.

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Black market trading sites can put accounts at risk and create many customer service challenges. We felt that the players themselves also deserved the opportunity to benefit from the extra loot they found, as opposed to having all of the benefit go to the black market/illegal trading organizations. We know the auction house isn’t perfect, but with your help and feedback, we’ll be able to continue making it a better experience for those who choose to use it. On the flipside, we are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention. Thank you for all the feedback about that.

One other common topic we’ve seen in the forums is the always-connected experience, and the perception that the online requirement is nothing but an ineffective form of copy protection that has already been cracked. While we’ve never said that this requirement guarantees that there will be no cheating or game cracks, it does help us battle those problems (we have not found any fully functional cracks). More important to us is that the online requirement is critical for the long-term integrity of the game experience. I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design. The effectiveness of the online elements -- including the friends list and cross-game communication; co-op matchmaking; persistent characters that you can use by yourself, with others, and in PvP; and some of our customer support, service, and security components -- is tied directly to the online nature of the game. These and other online-enabled features are essential to our design for Diablo III. That said, there are still improvements we believe we can make to expand the online experience and make co-op play even more rewarding, and this will remain one of our priorities moving forward. Overall, while there are some downsides to the online-only approach, I still believe this was the best long-term decision for the game.

I know many of you are also looking forward to patch 1.1, our PvP update, which will provide new experiences and give you a whole new way to apply the skills you’ve picked up while battling demons. This patch will also build on the social and auction house changes I mentioned above, and the team will continue to fix bugs and further tune game balance as well.

We’re also working on a gameplay system that will provide players who have max-level, high-powered characters new goals to strive for as an alternative to the “item hunt.” We’re not ready to get into specifics just yet, but I can say that we’re actively taking your feedback into account as we plan out the future of the game.

As always, we appreciate your candor and passion. Your constructive feedback and thoughts are valuable -- they will continue to help us be a better company. I just want to reiterate that while we can’t claim to have ever shipped a perfect game, we are committed to supporting our games relentlessly and making improvements where we can. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime

Source: Battle.net Forum

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Diablo 3 Speed: Power Leveling Strategy Guide

Diablo 3 Video: Frenzy Barbarian Build

Click To View: Frenzy Barbarian Build Skill Calculator

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Inferno Codex: The Ultimate Diablo 3 Strategy Guide