Were any DH PTR bugs fixed?

General Discussion
1

A few days ago PezRadar stated that the patch notes won’t get too many changes.

Fair enough, bug fixes are important.

Now, upon reading the finalized notes, absolutely nothing changed except they added periods to the end of some sentences! I’m not going to comment here about how some of the quickest fixes (e.g. Leonine, Emimei, Holy Point Shot) could have been implemented as simple number changes but this was a missed opportunity!

As for the bug fixes themselves, they wrote:

PTR Specific:

  • Note: The following issues were only live on the PTR, but we’re including the fixes here for visibility to indicate intended functionality on live.
  • Seasonal effects no longer deal area damage.
  • Seasonal buff resets if player exits and reenters a rift.
  • Seasonal theme should no longer work in Set Dungeons.
  • Fixed Maltorius’ Petrified Spike dealing additive bonus damage instead of multiplicative.
  • Fixed seasonal buff that sometimes may drop off whenever the player enters an invulnerable state.
  • Changed seasonal buff to base its damage on the amount of kills. (not really a bug, more of a change)

I agree that some of the bugs were indeed major such as the seasonal theme being too strong (I’m really interested in that last bullet point), but were ANY DH bugs listed even looked at? As a reference from my DH PTR feedback thread:

  • Strafe-generated Evasive Fire does not have an attack animation.
  • Strafe-generated Grenades do not aim towards the enemy.
  • Strafe-generated primaries fire with inconsistent rate of fire.
  • Damage reduction from the GoD 4-piece bonus does not have an icon.
  • Strafe does not fire primaries unless a valid target is in range.
  • Refreshing Entangling Shot does not refresh Numbing Traps.
  • Entangling Shot sometimes displays a chain on targets no longer ensnared.

While I could have been optimistic that some minor bug fixes in my list were addressed, the statement: “we’re including the fixes here for visibility to indicate intended functionality on live” with no mention of DH bugs, does not offer much hope on this front.

Many players like myself have devoted dozens of hours this past PTR trying to make sure everything works as intended and is balanced with the rest of the game. The PTR invitation for players to “try and break things” for testing and provide useful feedback seems to have not been very sincere if there is no acknowledgement or result of our hard work.

I didn’t want this post to be a rant but I wanted to voice my frustration over the transparency of the PTR testing and feedback process. While I am grateful for PezRadar’s communications, if no changes were made to something that was requested/reported a lot, it would be nice to learn why (e.g. implementation was too hard, server lag issue, etc.) instead of just being ignored.

TL;DR I feel like my massive effort on trying to help in the PTR feedback process was completely wasted and not one change I proposed or bug I reported was implemented or addressed.

23 Likes
2

While I am happy to play a new set, I believe the season theme complications sabotaged the full extent of DH upgrades and even the particulars of our new GoD set.

At a minimum I hope they will hot fix the commonly encountered game impacting bugs along the way, and make right on the power of Bolas, Impale and even SoJ come 2.7.0.

  • Strafe does not fire primaries unless a valid target is in range.
  • Refreshing Entangling Shot does not refresh Numbing Traps.
  • Entangling Shot sometimes displays a chain on targets no longer ensnared.
  • Damage reduction from the GoD 4-piece bonus does not have an icon.
3

At least the god set is playable
Necro set is literally unplayable at its current state

I think the community should boycott the next ptr and dont give any feedback

They dont care so why should we then

5 Likes
4

True, but only with Hungering Arrow. Bolas and other generators are junk with the exception of Entangling Shot as a support skill (its damage is trash though). Also, while the Holy Point Shot did get a buff and Crusaders did get a nerf, the RGK meta hasn’t changed.

I feel sorry for Necros in that their new set flopped but they aren’t alone since Wizards had the same problem (at least you can LoD build it). Also, the Barb Frenzy set was underwhelming compared to the standard WW build; if it could get some way to maintain permanent WotB, then it might be close.

1 Like
5

Oh god yes, these 2 were my pet peeves when I tried out the set during PTR. Although the only work-around for the damage reduction for me was to look at my stacks of momentum which I try to have it maintained above 7 stacks at all time.

But yes, after taking the Season 21 Preview thread it’s as though there was no work done since the 2nd iteration of the PTR patch and it felt like our feedback was for nought.

6

How I read it:
They have limited resources and put the resources into fixing bugs that impacted everyone (season theme) rather than relatively minor bugs on the new sets that can wait until the next patch.

I don’t know if you’ve worked in a software engineering company, but they clearly had to make some big changes to the season theme behind the scenes. (That last bullet point about making the theme scale on damage seems to me like they had to think quite hard about how to stop the zdps 150 scenario.)

My guess is the development resource responsible for the DH set got dragged into the season theme fixes and simply didn’t have any time left to work on any DH fixes.

Boycotting the PTR seems like the most ridiculous idea in the face of what’s happening in the rest of the world. Chill, dude. Get some perspective.

1 Like
7

Based on the time elapsed and the actual changes made between the last PTR build and the final version, there are probably very few people working on D3 (as in maybe 2-3 people) and they are busy with other projects. That said, more transparency would go a long way. If they simply stated they don’t have the time and resources but acknowledge the bugs, then the situation would be different.

Agreed, boycotting won’t really work without a players’ union or something where people would have to coordinate the efforts. Even then, it would only make the disconnect between the players and developers even wider!

8

My question is, why spend so much time and resources on balancing the seasonal theme instead of working on itemization and set balances? So what if a few top players who fish for the best GR can clear 150 on a ZDP? Who cares? I want to have fun with the new optimized sets. 150 GR ranks are not important to me nor is seasonal theme balances.

I feel like I spend alot of hours testing the PTR to give you important feedback and the majority of your focus was on seasonal theme balance. Why did I do that? Why did I post all those threads that were ignored for this next patch?

4 Likes
9

write feedback on toilet paper and put it in their mailbox?
That’s how I see it.
and it is very uncomfortable to read very good ideas etc. and to know that it only ends up in the garbage can …

2 Likes
10

Players union. BWAHHAAAHAHAAA!!! Yeah, players are gonna’ pay dues to a union to represent them in grievances against Blizz. A union that will end up protecting bad players and bad play, using the dues to fund Vegas boondoggles, and tell their members what to do, say and think and when, or risk blacklisting.

2 Likes
11

I think that they were not expecting to see a bunch of streamers clearing (or near clearing) GR150 solo with a zDPS toon and they freaked the eff out.

I mean we all know the S19 theme was doing all the work - and they thought “hmm, well if we just limit it on a timer…” and it blew up in their faces with AD, without AD, and guys literally just running around grouping stuff in hopes a meteor or snowball would pop to kill elites/RG.

Can only hope that a tweak comes after patch before S21…

I’d have preferred a return to double mats and then maybe the slog to 7500 bounties (for me at least) would be less annoying.

Just know the DH community (at least our Clan for sure) appreciates your (and DiE’s, Woog’s, dmkt’s, etc) efforts to get at least SOME things fixed for the new set. I for one can’t wait to play it.

12

True (and I was really hoping too for that HPS further buff), but we don’t even know if RGKs will be needed this season. If the seasonal theme becomes powerful enough with the number of kills, the new meta might be trashkiller + 3 supports…

2 Likes
13

I get the upset over some stuff not being “acknowledged” but I do think the stuff was acknowledged. I mean, the Community Manager posted in the thread we made for the DH in the PTR.

He said he forwarded it to the people that matter, in essence. And the devs didn’t do anything to the items that perform well like Odyssey’s that some folks thought would be nerfed before the patch went live. (Note: I’m not saying it should be nerfed, just saying a lot of folks thought it would be.)

When the mid PTR patch was released, they took our feedback into account and made the set better.

I’m thinking it’s a little unfair to then accuse the devs of ignoring us after they listened to a lot of our feedback and implemented some of it. Not all of it, which is something else, but they did listen and they did do some things we wanted.

That in itself tells me our feedback meant something to them and for that, I thank them.

JMO.

5 Likes
14

Probably ran out of interns at the last minute…

I actually think the skeleton crew devs are doing a decent job considering the limitations. Better than having no major updates for over a year which was the situation not too long ago.

1 Like
15

As an addendum to my previous post though, I HAD hoped they would have done something about Hungering Arrow not piercing the waller affix.

Failing that, it would have been nice if they made the Waller affix and the Missile Dampening affix equal in their spawn rates. There’s going to be a lot of upset people when they discover that with GoD6, the Waller affix is pretty much a skip in high Grifts. And it being a common affix makes the fishing a bit harder.

On the other hand, catch two or three Missile Dampeners in the same Grift and you pretty much have it made in the Grift. So there is that. lol

16

That was my #1 bugfix I was hoping for too.

17

exactly this. My favorite class has the weakest set now.
And what has changed?
Its completely wayne if theres a botter on rank 1 or a zdps. It is of zero interest which one has the longest in the next season. I like fun and alot of different builds for me to push higher than i did last season.

1 Like
19

I feel like the development time used to port changes to the consoles could have been better placed for PC balancing first. Why are consoles getting priority over PC? I heard that consoles got the patch yesterday before PC did. SMH