The Patch 2.4 PTR is now live and brings a plethora of changes to Diablo II, including Uber Diablo and the Ladder Season! Check out these patch notes before jumping into Battle.net next week.
The “diablo 2 release date” is a patch that was released on the “Diablo II: Resurrected” PTR. The patch includes Ladder Season, Uber Diablo, and Class Changes.
PTR Focus & Details
Sanctuary’s Heroes Thank you for your kind input on some of Diablo 2’s first modifications in almost a decade. We’ll get back to you with revisions based on your feedback, comments, and survey responses. We focused most of our efforts on areas where the feedback was very positive, as well as those places where we may not have pushed hard enough for a substantial shift in this round of adjustments. More feedback on these revisions would be very appreciated.
Please be advised that there may be occasional maintenances, outages, hotfixes, or small updates as we proceed through this PTR. All of the modifications made in this PTR are subject to change. Before we make these modifications permanent for Live, we’d want to get some feedback and measure how well they’re received. The following content upgrades are recommended for PTR participants to investigate and play:
- Season of the Ladder
- Updates on Uber Diablo
- Updates to various balances
Single-player mode (offline) As a consequence of our new balancing improvements, Patch 2.4 makes changes to character save data. To let gamers test offline material, a new folder has been established. Players will be able to try out classes from prior Diablo II games. Import those character files into this folder to be resurrected.
Please post your comments in the PTR Feedback section. Please report any issues that you find in the PTR Bug Report forum. So, without further ado, let’s get started on these new features!
PLEASE NOTE: The game stuff covered in this blog is not final and may change at any time.
CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS
- LADDER EVALUATION
- CHANGES IN UBER DIABLO
- CHANGES IN CLASS
- Mercenaries
- WORDS RUNNING
- MONSTER AND LEVEL CHANGES
- CHANGES IN THE GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
- FIXES FOR BUGS
- HOW DO I GET INVOLVED? & PTR CHARACTER COPY
LADDER EVALUATION
We are very excited to invite you all to test the Ladder functionality on the PTR. The Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder launch represents an optional ranked competitive system of the game through a series of modes available to select from with a fresh Ladder-specific character(s). Each mode will have their own leaderboard where players compete to strategically gain experience within a limited timeframe while having access to Ladder-specific content. When the Season of the Ladder ends, leaderboard rankings will reset, transitioning characters to non-ladder mode, giving players an opportunity to store their hard-earned treasured loot as a new Season of the Ladder awaits them.
For the PTR test, we’d want you to concentrate on the front-end presentation of the Ladder and how the new balance modifications affect Ladder play.
Specifications:
- Ladder is now available for testing, and the team will be emulating a Season of the Ladder start and end during the PTR
- Players may get season start and finish information by using the /ladder and /helpladder chat commands.
- The leaderboard UI displays ladder information, and console players will be updated as they load into each game.
- Your Ladder character, as well as any Ladder-exclusive goods your character has equipped or in their inventory, will be transformed to a non-Ladder character at the conclusion of a season.
- You’ll have until the start of the following season to collect goods from your seasonal Ladder shared storage tab and put them into your regular online play.
- When Season 1 finishes, for example, you have until the start of Season 3 to collect stuff from your Season 1 cache. Any goods that are not recovered will be lost indefinitely.
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CHANGES IN UBER DIABLO
The method for summoning Uber Diablo in Diablo II: Resurrected will stay the same as it was in v1.10, which is by selling Stone of Jordan rings. However, we’ve made some adjustments to how and where that progress is measured, which we think will improve the community’s overall experience. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
The regional database will now keep track of Uber Diablo progress for each game type. Uber Diablo will spawn for everyone in the same area, not just those on the same server instance, after the threshold is reached by selling enough Stone of Jordan rings.
Uber Diablo’s progress is now monitored by game type. There are a total of eight progressions being monitored. Classic, Classic Hardcore (HC), Classic Ladder, Classic HC Ladder, Expansion, Expansion HC, Expansion Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder, Expansion HC As a result of the change, we’ve introduced additional messages for players to help them predict when Uber Diablo may appear. At certain levels of advancement, this message will be broadcast out to all players in the area, and it may be manually verified with the /uberdiablo chat command. We hope that by making these adjustments, more players will be able to feel the genuine dread of Uber Diablo.
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CHANGES IN CLASS
Impale
- Impale’s animation speed has increased by 30%.
Javelin of the Plague
- Javelin of the Plague poison duration is no longer fixed at 3 seconds as it was in the previous PTR, but its duration and damage scaling have been adjusted compared to Live. This should net out to a 20% damage-per-second increase at level 1 and up to a 33% damage-per-second increase at max level.
Several Shots
- Arrow that is being guided synergy has been added: +12% physical damage each level.
Arrow of Immolation
Arrow that is being guided
- Added synergy from Several Shots: +12% physical damage per level
Strafe
- Synergy from Several Shots: +5% physical damage per level
- Synergy from Arrow that is being guided: +10% physical damage per level
Developer Remarks: We’ve taken notice of your observation that the physical bow abilities lack the same synergy as the cold and fire bow skills. We’re hoping that by adding some synergies to the physical bow abilities, they’ll be able to stay viable.
Inferno’s Wake
- Added yards calculation to the Inferno’s Wake tooltip
Fury of the Blade
- The attack rating has raised by 10%.
Attack by Leap
- The Barbarian now deals extra physical damage to surrounding enemies within a range of 4.6 yards when landing from a Attack by Leap. Damage scales per level.
- Modified Leap and Attack by Leap jump to give it a smoother trajectory that should keep the barbarian on screen at all times, and reduce jerkiness when he lands
- Leap and Attack by Leap now have a minimum jump height and duration
- Increased mana cost of Attack by Leap from 9 to 10
Developer Comments: We saw an opportunity to make Attack by Leap more viable by changing to fantasy to make the leap itself an attack. By doing this we feel like the combat viability of the skill will increase while still preserving it as a movement skill. We feel that this change paired with the animation changes we made to it brings the Attack by Leap more in line with the fantasy and feel we want it to have.
Mastery of the Sword
- Blade Mastery has been renamed.
- It now affects daggers as well as swords.
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 40%. (from 28 percent )
Mastery of the Axe
- The attack rating improved by 12%.
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 40%. (from 28 percent )
Mastery of the Mace
- The attack rating improved by 12%.
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 40%. (from 28 percent )
Mastery of Polearms
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 44%. (from 30 percent )
Mastery of the Spear
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 44%. (from 30 percent )
Mastery of Throwing
- The basic attack bonus has been increased to 44%. (from 30 percent )
- There’s a better probability of not consuming a certain amount of food each stage (Up to 50 percent )
- Throwing weapon critical hits now refill amount.
Barbarians run out of throwing weapons way too rapidly, according to the developer. Adding the ability to not consume as well as the ability to refill will enable a throwing barbarian to be viable without having to visit town.
Armageddon
- Armageddon no longer requires the Hurricane talent.
- Armageddon’s missile damage radius has been increased by 33%. (from 3 to 4)
- Armageddon’s missile drop rate was increased by around 30% (from 3 to 4 per second).
Summoning
- Spirit wolves, dire wolves, and bears may now all be called at the same time by Druids.
Developer Comments: The Druid’s ability to summon just one kind of summonable at a time has limited the build’s practicality and prevented the fantasy of a Druid Summoner from reaching its full potential. We believe that a druid’s ability to call all of his buddies at once will provide for a more engaging and enjoyable gameplay experience.
Werewolf
- Only the new attack speed calculation included in the PTR is used by Werewolf currently.
- Increased the werewolf attack speed limit from 75% to 150%.
Fury
- Increased the time between assaults by 40%.
Werebear
- Only the new attack speed calculation included in the PTR is used by Werebear currently.
- Increased the Werebear attack speed limit from 75% to 150%.
- The damage boost each level has risen from 8% to 15%.
- The base defensive value has raised from 25% to 40%.
- The defense boost each level has risen from 6% to 10%.
- While executing attacks or skills, you cannot be interrupted.
Maul
- Per charge, you now get a +3% increase in attack speed.
Developer Remarks: We’ve discussed the best technique to advance shapeshifting Druids. We’ve decided to stick with the contemporary (Balance PTR 1) method of computing attack speed for the wereforms after considerable deliberation. The werewolf has been rebalanced to enable it to travel at even higher rates than before. Werebear, on the other hand, is intended to fulfill the ideal of a strong, unstoppable killing machine. Uninterruptible attacks and talents have been added, as well as enhanced damage and protection. While this will alter how players have previously played the Werebear, we believe it is more in accordance with the intended fantasy. We’ve provided attack speed benefits to Maul for players who liked their quick werebear builds, but we also hope that the new Werewolf adjustments will offer them the same style of play, since it is now the faster form.
Golem of Blood
- Per level, a 20% decrease in mana cost is applied.
- The amount of damage dealt by attacks increases by around 20%.
Golem of Fire
- Per level, a 20% decrease in mana cost is applied.
- The amount of damage dealt by attacks increases by around 20%.
- The level boost from Holy Fire has been reduced to one from two.
Developer Remarks: We’ve heard that golems aren’t considered important enough as talents. We expect that by making these adjustments, they will seem strong enough to be used more often without undergoing a major revamp.
Thorns
- When struck, it now does a fixed amount of damage in addition to returning a portion of the damage suffered to the adversary.
Holy Fire
- The proximity advantage for Area Damage has been changed. At melee range, it now does 200 percent damage to foes.
- Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage numbers include the proximity damage benefit to the fullest extent possible.
- The percentage of people who can resist fire has climbed from 18 to 21%.
Freeze, Holy Freeze
- The proximity advantage for Area Damage has been changed. At melee range, it now does 200 percent damage to foes.
- Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage numbers include the proximity damage benefit to the fullest extent possible.
Shock to the system
- The proximity advantage for Area Damage has been changed. At melee range, it now does 200 percent damage to foes.
- Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage numbers include the proximity damage benefit to the fullest extent possible.
Sanctuary
- The proximity advantage for Area Damage has been changed. At melee range, it now does 200 percent damage to foes.
- Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage numbers include the proximity damage benefit to the fullest extent possible.
Holy Bolt
- In addition to Undead, Demons are now damaged.
The Heaven’s Fist
- In addition to Undead, Demons are now damaged.
Developer Remarks: We think that it is an intriguing mechanism that is worth attempting to balance appropriately after viewing comments on the elimination of area damage scaling in our PTR Balance Patch. It has been re-implemented with a lesser damage scale than before.
Nova
- The cost of nova mana has been lowered. The initial mana cost has been reduced from 15 to 13.
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Mercenaries
Rogue Archer (Act 1)
- Amazon Bows may now be used.
- Gear now provides + Amazon skill boosts.
Iron Wolf (Act 3)
- Chilling Armor has been substituted with frozen armor.
- Redemption Aura was replaced by Fire Bolt.
Barbarian Warrior (Act 5)
- Gear now grants + Barbarian skill boosts.
- Qual-Kehk has a new vicious Barbarian ready for hire. These warriors are incapable of wielding two-handed swords. However, they have had extensive training in the technique of dual wielding. They use the skills Frenzy, Taunt, and Iron Skin to entice foes in and unleash a torrent of assaults.
Developer Remarks: With these modifications, we intend to continue to boost the viability of non-Act 2 Mercenaries so that they see more use, as well as drive each one deeper into their class archetype by enabling them to wield class-specific equipment.
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WORDS RUNNING
- In addition to Swords, Plague may now be used on Claws and Daggers.
- Spears and Amazon Spears may now utilize the words Infinity, Obedience, and Pride.
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UPDATES TO THE LEVEL AREA AND THE MONSTER
- In the new level 85 zones, the density of unique monsters has been increased.
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UPDATES IN THE GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
General
- When a player attempts to begin the game with an out-of-date patch version, player messaging has been included.
- To enable us to convey critical game changes with all players, we added ‘Message of the Day’ features to the main menu.
AI
- Pets, summons, and Mercenaries teleporting to the player instead of being despawned have been improved.
Barbarian
- Updated Barbarian Leap and Attack by Leap animation behavior to give it a smoother trajectory that should keep the Barbarian on-screen at all times, and reduce jerkiness when he lands
Selection of Characters
- Newly created characters will now sort to the top of the Selection of Characters list
Mercenaries
- Mercenary UIs will now show whether a mercenary is unable to utilize a skill due to their level.
Online
- If a player tries to establish a private channel with a name that exceeds the character restriction, a message will be shown.
- A /offline chat command has been added to change your user’s presence to ‘Offline.’
Vendors
- When using a controller, players may now purchase pre-filled tomes and keys.
Performance
- On various console systems, particle effects have been improved.
- For PC gamers, a VFX quality choice has been added.
- Inventory quick-move operations have been improved to decrease delays.
Settings
- The Offline Game Difficulty Scale will now be remembered across game sessions.
- The ability to limit your mouse pointer to the game screen has been added.
- In the settings menu, a VRAM consumption gauge has been added.
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FIXES FOR BUGS
Accessibility
- Some UI bugs that might arise while using Large Font Mode have been resolved.
Barbarian
- Fixed an issue where your attack speed while dual-wielding may be improperly computed based on which hand you used or which order you equipped your weapons in.
- Fixed an issue where the Grim Ward’s Find Potion synergy wasn’t working.
Druid
- When Hunger was cast without a target, it didn’t cost mana. This has been fixed.
- When the Druid is low on mana, the Druid Solar Creeper will now correctly eat corpses and replenish mana.
- When your strike misses, Rabies now uses mana appropriately.
Paladin
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t switch weapons as a Paladin on controller if you were using a bow with no ammunition.
- As a Paladin, you could no longer deactivate auras if you were using a bow without ammo on the controller.
- The Conviction Aura Tooltip no longer displays inaccurate information due to a bug.
- Fixed an issue where the Sanctuary aura’s extra damage was not being applied to Undead.
- Sacrifice no longer misses moving targets due to a bug.
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where a player’s ability to use a skill may be stopped if they dodged, avoided, or blocked while doing so.
- If you used an uninterruptible skill frequently, it may be interrupted within a 1 frame window.
- Fixed an issue where item-granted talents couldn’t always be utilized on a controller.
- If a player makes a trade request with you while you are chatting to an NPC, you may be banned from talking to that NPC.
- Faster Run/Walk on the game client was not updating due to a bug where the weapon change was not updating.
- Fixed a bug where you couldn’t see another player’s attack animation for the Rabies talent if the attack didn’t land.
- After dying and entering a new game, skill bindings for OSkills would no longer persist.
- One of the Chaos Sanctuary seals was impossible to pick due to a bug.
- The entry to the Glacial Trail was not highlighted due to a bug.
- In Nightmare difficulty, a bug was fixed where fire enchanted enemies were inflicting too much damage.
- It was fixed an issue where if you kept moving after you ran out of stamina, the stamina meter would not replenish.
- A chamber in Act 1 Caves had misaligned walls, which was fixed.
- Fixed an issue where a player might be repeatedly stunned, rendering them unable to attack.
- A bug where a few melee talents would often miss while targeting moving opponents has been fixed (Amazon Fend, Druid Fury, Paladin Sacrifice, Paladin Zeal).
- A bug where a channel ability would stop casting if you were directly targeting an opponent with your mouse before to casting and that enemy died has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug where Quick Cast melee skills might sometimes fail to perform correctly under certain conditions.
- Fixed an issue where the behavior of Quick Cast melee abilities differed depending on whether they were tied to the left or right click. The behavior of left click fast cast talents has been aligned with the behavior of right click quick cast abilities.
- Fixed an issue where the Force Move and Quick Cast talents may still be used in Legacy Mode when in a full-screen UI menu.
- Fixed an issue where players might miss attacks while utilizing melee abilities against foes that were just inside striking range but moving away.
- Fixed a rare problem where, in some networking settings, casting spells quickly might result in erroneous mana costs.
- When Quantity was removed from melee abilities, the item modifications Replenishing and Propagation were not activating.
Character Development
- Some players were able to circumvent character name validation and generate incorrect offline character names as a result of this bug. Those characters may now be corrected, and players who are impacted will be asked to rename the invalid characters.
Controls
- When using a PlayStation controller on a PC, certain button prompts would show with an Xbox controller button symbol. This has been fixed.
- Assigning a skill to Key 2 without binding anything to Key 1 caused the keybind UI to disappear.
Graphics
- Fixed artifacting that might occur when using DLSS on some VFX.
- When using Fade behind a translucent wall, the player would become invisible. This has been fixed.
- When standing behind translucent walls, ethereal things seemed to be invisible. This has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug in Tamoe Highland where grass would pop in and out when travelling.
- On consoles, an issue where VFX might go missing over a long length of time was fixed.
- On PS4, an issue where VFX might display as black boxes in high memory use conditions has been resolved.
- Fixed a DLSS-related ghosting effect that may occur while the game camera was fixed and moving objects.
Localization
- Some localization difficulties with skill tooltips have been resolved.
- In the Xbox social menus, we fixed certain localization difficulties relating to user presence.
- In the Settings menu, certain translation errors were fixed.
- Fixed a number of difficulties with the localization of chat commands.
Online
- People in Europe and Korea were unable to ban or report users due to a bug.
- Fixed an issue where the Friends List’s right-click context menu choices wouldn’t always work.
- When using a controller in the Lobby menu, you could no longer highlight game titles and join them.
- If you attempted to join a game via the friends list when you were rate restricted, you may be trapped in a ‘attempting to join’ condition.
- Fixed an issue where switching between Keyboard and Controller on the front end would sometimes push you into the Offline character tab, preventing you from accessing the online tab for a short period.
- On consoles, an issue was fixed where online friends who had their platform settings set to ‘Offline’ would display in the friends list grouped into other online friends rather than their other offline friends.
- On Switch, a bug was fixed where removing someone from your friends list would not always delete them properly.
- When opening the Horadric Cube while in the midst of a deal with another player, a visual glitch might arise.
- The auto-generated game name and password from game sessions created using the ‘Play’ button on the main menu will now be hidden.
- Fixed an issue where your Selection of Characters wouldn’t persist if you exited the lobby
Performance
- Users with GPUs from the 3050 series no longer have erroneous default graphics settings.
- A problem that might happen while quitting the game has been fixed.
- A problem that might happen during the Pandemonium event has been fixed.
- Fixes for many crashes and stability issues
Settings
- After changing characters, your game difficulty settings in Lobby would not update correctly. This has been fixed.
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HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?
You must have a Diablo II: Resurrected game license tied to a Battle.net account in good standing (i.e. one that hasn’t been suspended or banned) to participate in the public test. In addition, if you haven’t already, you’ll need to download and install the Blizzard Battle.net desktop software.
Step 1: Open the Battle.net desktop software and restart it.
Step 2: On the left-hand menu, go to the Diablo II: Resurrected tab.
Step 3:Just above the “Play” button on the Diablo II: Resurrected interface is a drop-down option (note that this may say “Install” if you do not have Diablo II: Resurrected currently installed). Before continuing, choose “PTR: Diablo II: Resurrected” from the drop-down option.
Step 4:To begin the installation process, click Install.
If you don’t already have a PTR account, one will be established for you. Accounts from all areas are eligible to participate in the PTR, which is accessible in all supported languages. Click here for more information about installing and starting the PTR.
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MANY THANKS TO THE COMMUNITY
Your help is much appreciated by our crew. We released Diablo II: Resurrected last year, and now it’s 2022, and we’re excited to include these new features into our game. Thank you for participating and for your continuing support.
Check out our website for more information about Diablo II: Resurrected, or follow our official Twitter account @Diablo for real-time updates.
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