First impressions are over with, I’ve had some time to thoroughly test the systems, so let’s just dive right into it.
NPC Relocations: Great decision here, everything is much closer together, no need to run halfway across town to visit the Occultist anymore. The Jeweler at the Tree of Whispers is also a great addition. I don’t suppose we could get an Alchemist 
eventually as well?
Materials Simplified: Overall I like this change, less items to worry about, and I don’t have to go all over Lilith’s Green Acre to find the 10 different herbs and spices needed for an Elixir or to upgrade my potion. The new pop-up over the Health Globe was a nice touch as well.
Pertaining to the new Masterworking Materials, please allow us to open more then 1 Cache at a time! I’m talking about converting materials into a lower tier, so Neathiron to Ingolith, and Ingolith to Obducite. The conversion gives you a Cache of materials which you then must open. Please let us open them up in bulk I beg you. The only time I’ve been tempted to use an Auto-Clicker in this game is for opening up these caches, I didn’t of course, but I was tempted!
Salvage: The button for “All Items” surprised me at first, and while there is a pop-up explaining that it would destroy all items in my inventory, I thought it was similar to Live and wouldn’t destroy Legendaries, then I found out it destroyed Uniques as well. I do like this change, but maybe a little more clarity in the warning would be nice. Just a small blurb that says “this includes Legendary and Unique items as well” or something along those lines.
Affixes: Great changes all around, I think the Amulet could still use some more trimming for what should be allowed to roll on that particular item, but overall I like these changes a lot. Also as I noted in my First Impressions post, there is a little bit of a double dip situation of skills with the Chest and Boots for Necromancers. Just a recap you can get +4 Bone Spirit or +4 Corpse Explosion (base) with these two items combined, where as any other skill you would only be able to get +2.
I’ll touch up on other affix issues in the categories below.
Greater Affixes: Let me just say these are a great addition to itemization. However these definitely don’t stand out enough when dropped in my opinion, nor do they stand out at all in your inventory. The added roman numeral at the end is typically lost amongst the other names of loot on the ground when picking it up. There’s also no way to differentiate them within your inventory for a quick glance either.
Perhaps a slightly different color in name and background color or border of the item would help to tell them apart. Or when sorted in your inventory they are at the front of all other items for example.
Or as some one mentioned down below an icon to help differentiate them better. Maybe a giant Roman numeral over the item itself, so we know at a glance just how many affixes are Greater.
Tempering: Great idea, just needs some slight tweaks.
I feel Tempering Recipes should be a one time drop like Glyphs and you shouldn’t be able to get duplicates. I actually found all but 3 recipes during my entire time playing, but I did keep finding duplicates. Regardless we can’t trade them, so there’s no point to even finding duplicates.
I feel the removal of Damage Reduction Affix was unnecessary and will definitely be needed for higher Tier Pits. This could easily be reintroduced into a Tempering Recipe at the very least. There were other questionable affixes that were kept in as Tempering Recipes, I feel this one could definitely come back.
To a lesser extent you could also reintroduce +All Stats Affix to a tempering recipe, or just reduce the requirements of Rare Paragon Bonus Nodes by a percentage to compensate. I know this affects Barbs and Rogues more so then any other class. I know you are aware of this issue, just throwing in my 2 cents.
Lastly I think the Tempering material costs are a little high. Just cut the cost in half and I think it would be good. I only say this due to the fact you have Veiled Crystals as the requirement for anything we do to enhance or change our items. It’s also hard to gauge how many Veiled Crystals we will be getting based on the PTRs’ increased Legendary drop rates.
As it stands though, just with Tempering alone, we will be spending 320 to 480 Veiled Crystals to Temper our gear with 2 affixes, this doesn’t account for rerolls mind you. That number could easily be 20 times as much if you consider just 1 reroll per Tempered affix on each item.
Combined with Masterworking, Enchanting, and requiring 75 Veiled Crystals to Imprint an Aspect, we’re going to be running out of Veiled Crystals real fast. Please take a look at the amount of Veiled Crystals required and other material costs per item based on each system.
Masterworking: I’ll just say up front I do not like failure chances for systems that require me to farm an abundance of a material or materials. It feels backwards, as if I’m being punished for working harder. I do appreciate the fail-safe that was added, but plainly speaking I do not enjoy the failure system.
Now might I offer an olive branch so to speak so we can compromise? How about you take away the Failure system along with the Rawhide and Veiled Crystal requirements, and just increase the Obducite, Ingolith, or Neathiron required? Obviously it would have to be a substantial increase, but I would be more willing to farm more materials for a 100% success rate then essentially grind the same amount of materials and continue to fail.
There is currently no way to upgrade the Base Damage, Armor, Resits, or Inherint Affixes on an item through upgrading anymore. Would be nice to have this back in some fashion as it does help a little with gearing, especially the resist upgrades we could get on jewelry.
Also just a small tweak to the tooltip to say that it requires a “Fully Tempered Ancestral” item. It was a little confusing at first is all.
Codex of Power: When visiting the Occultist and using the Search features, the Typed Search is more accurate then the Keyword Search, using the same exact word. I’ll use the example of the word ‘Minion’, when Typed will show 7 Aspects, when found using the Keyword Search it will show only 4 aspects. Small bug I’m sure, just throwing it out there.
Collections Menu: Codex of Power: Nothing major here, just would like a Search feature for the Tempering Recipes within the Collections: Codex of Power menu. I’d like to be able to see Tempering Recipes that had damage, or chance on hit, or resists, etc. Nothing major, just a small QoL.
Helltides: Great job all around here, I have nothing but praise for this, even more so because you made Baneful Hearts persist between Helltides and that is amazing. I also noticed the meter value persists between Helltides too, not too sure if this intended, but I do like it.
I would love for there to be a cap of Cinder Shards and have them persist between Helltides, but that’s an idea for another patch I’m sure.
Pits: Great addition to the game, however getting to the boss feels a little clunky and doesn’t flow well. I understand the reason behind it, but it feels a little weird to enter a portal, then have to travel down a hallway to get to the boss arena. It slows down the process just a little. Not to mention if you die, sometimes you are set back before you teleported into the chamber for the boss.
Also I don’t think there’s a way to stop a Pit once it’s started other then logging out and back in again. Would be nice to have a quit option when you know you won’t be finishing the Pit either way, so you can quickly stop it and get into a lower level one.
I could be wrong but I think I saw a warning when trying to teleport out of a Pit on Sunday night. I believe it said it would close the Pit if I left, so what I said may not apply anymore, apologies.
Item Drop Reduction: Honestly hard to guage this one. At times it felt like this didn’t apply, especially in Helltides or even NMD where I found the goblin packs (great addition btw). I don’t mind it, but it just brings us back to the cost of materials I discussed earlier. With less items obviously comes less materials. I know you guys have the numbers for this better then I do, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Necromancer: I know there are a few bugs or unintended interactions going on right now. I will just say I have enjoyed my pure minion necromancer since I started playing in the PTR. This is what I’ve wanted since launch pretty much. I have no doubt some things will be changed, but I’m still looking forward to playing a Necromancer in S4.
Barbarian: No doubt you saw this one coming, yes Dust Devils are awesome, fun, and amazing, otherwise I wouldn’t see 3 Barbs everywhere I go constantly using these things. But for the love of Lilith, can we tone down the size and opacity of these things? They quite literally cover the entire screen to the point where I can’t even see anything but these tornados everywhere.
I’m thankful I’m a Minion Necromancer and they keep me alive while killing enemies, but if I was any other class I would just not play anywhere near a Barb.
Experience & Leveling: A bit faster then usual, but overall I like the change. I’m still worried about Glyph Exp, but I think I remember Adam saying they were working on changes for that as well. It was fun to find a Razorplate at level 39 for my 2nd Necro though. I also found a Unique pair of legs (forget the name) as well.
Tempering recipes seemed to drop more often at lower levels as well, but they were mostly duplicates of what I already had thanks to boosting my first necro.
Conclusion: Great PTR all around, looking forward to the changes you guys make based on our feedback. I only ask that you share it with us before the campfire for the Season 4 Theme if at all possible. I don’t mean a patch, just talk about it or give us a list of things that will be changing based on the feedback kind of thing.
I think the majority of these changes are well done, and I think it’s a great starting point to getting the game on track to becoming a game I look forward to coming back to every season. Great job, keep us updated, and thank you for letting me experience the PTR. 
