PTR 2.1 Patch Notes - Nothing Exciting Sorry

PC General Discussion
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TLDR: Nothing exciting

Longer version:
I just saw the PTR 2.1 Patch notes after someone pointed out it was inserted towards the end of the PTR 2.1 What You Need to Know article from the Campfire Notes.

Nothing exciting stood out for me. I admit I was more bias towards seeing the SB nerfs and seeing any of Sorc improvements. The SB nerfs are good but nothing exciting.

It felt the updates were geared towards Torment 1. If you consider the changes in the context of T1, they look really acceptable. But once you think of T4 and Pit 90s, nothing looks remarkable.

In my previously deleted post (because I mentioned the game that must not be named) I said the S7 powers are good but feels like more a rehash of S1 and S2. So I think you can skip S7 and go straight to S8 and you should be fine.

Now after seeing the patch notes, it makes S7 more interesting than the base game and VoH itself. Basically what I am saying here is it feels the only meaningful patch notes to 2.1 is nerfing SB, the rest doesn’t make anything exciting.

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It is simply more damage, like almost every season.

The conserning part is that Blizzard is selling as ‘‘new’’ simple bug fixes and features that should have been there since day 1.
The armory shouldn’t be exciting for anyone!!! That’s a basic functionality.
Shadow Clone now simply working, is being sold as new addition instead of bug fixing? Are this people serious? How in the world are they bringing this as an addition? Shadow Clone have never dealt damage! They are bug fixing it!

All you hear about Diablo 4 is that ‘‘it is moving in the right direction’’. F it, man. This ain’t no new neither indie game. I would be forgiving with Last Epoch or Diablo 4 if it was in an early access state, because that’s how it feels despite having a freaking DLC released already.

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The number of words explained is huge. This is the embodiment of the designer’s workload.
It doesn’t matter what is revised. Blizzard designers don’t care either.

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In the scope of thing, this expansion didn’t add anything. I thought they would’ve added more branches in the skill trees, more of a completed story in the campaign, anything…

To compete, they need to remove the gates and barriers. They add something, but then add some sort of gate to prevent us from attaining our goals. It’s an abusive relationship.

Make all Tier 4 content exciting somehow. They have an ‘equation’ for fun. Add random encounters, give us ways to challenge us when we finally go full Super Saiyan. But don’t make it formulaic. There’s some steep competition coming. Time to put some effort in besides tweaking numbers. Diablo 3 is over. Diablo 2 is over. Time to step up, try something new, and stop gating.

The Pit, NMDs, and Undercity all feel the same. Fix that.

Infernal Hordes is too formulaic.

Add an extra challenge mode to bosses with a leaderboard. Heck, have a gauntlet or coliseum where we fight multiple bosses at once.

Give the grinders something worth grinding. Leaderboards that aren’t cheese.

Fix all your pinnacle bosses like the Tomb Lord to be challenging without this dumb formulaic number tweak.

X(2-a) + YZ(a/422) = Fun

And do weekly balance tweaks. Pay attention to your game.

If there’s no vision, it’s time to hire someone that has vision or passion. If ideas are bogged down by internal politics, well D4 is gonna turn into most people’s filler game, not their main game.

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The gravitation aspect of Ball Lightning seem interesting. It works like a free Raiment.

The rest is just ordinary. With Armory, I can play more none meta build like Firewall Sorc and fireballs. I can switch back to meta build like Firbolt or Ball Lightning for Pit pushing.

S7 will be a season to try more builds, regardless of its damage in Pit pushing.

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weird, why do players who only play the base game accuse blizzard of p2w?
i mean the expansion opened up nahantu, a new storyline, the dark citadel, undercity, mercanaries, runes and a new class.

what else would you have wanted? im asking quite specifically because really, by now its not uncommon that midseason people become bored, and try to be angry at d4. Now, there are reasons to be angry, id personally focus on the technical parts tho. the amount of crashes, bugs, etc.

To get to the point… How much content should a 40 bucks expansion deliver?

there arent more branches, but new skills/passives, and some restructures.

the story got pushed forward. now, i agree that some might not like the storytelling. Personally i think its better to just fight off mephisto and thats it - tastes differ-

thats the part it always leads down to. at one point a person is “done” with a season. What would you “somehow” consider more exciting?

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I have the expansion. Don’t know what you mean.

Dark Citadel is new I agree. It’s cool when I can get a group to complete it. I really don’t have any desire to revisit it after the one time i completed it.

Undercity feels like the Pit or NMD dungeons. Nothing ingenious with these.

Mercenaries don’t add anything to how we play late game. I don’t notice their effects besides levelling a new character. I could dismiss mine and my game play wouldn’t change.

Change wise - they need to add more chaos. End game is rinse repeat on everything. T4 should be threatening on any level. My main is a shred druid too, nothing OP but I can blow through everything easily. Can only do a 98PIT tho. High level PITs aren’t fun though. It’s slowly pecking away monster health against a timer.

Storywise, it’s unclear if we are even close to fighting Mephisto or not. The dangling carrot is exactly the same from the base campaign.

And people are miffed because of the thought that has been put into POE2. D4 has turned into a D3 expansion. I don’t even like POE1. The thought and heart that they’ve put into POE2 is absurd.

T3 could be the easier stomping ground to farm bosses, mats, and feel OP. T4 needs to be threatening on some level for all classes. They need to prioritize exploits and bug fixing to keep T4 a threat for everyone. Leaderboards would only be related to events in T4.

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never said you dont, sorry if that came off wrong.

i agree with you on the chaos, and pit 98 is nice too btw! too many people are way too hung up here on the best people who clear stuff 20 pits above them and forget to just have fun. BUT fun ends sometime, be it in seasonal games, or mmoarpgs. at some point you are done with the content. why not take a break and enjoy something else? for example poe2 or any other game literally ^^

while we are talking about “chaos” we also had a flood of threads here a while ago complaining about the Butcher in nmds. I am a fan of such random events, even if it leads to a death. ^^

but

and that still has to be seen. i mean seriously. noone played it yet, and people act like poe2 is the new holy grail of arpgs. no offense, but i think you know how ridiculous that is. previews always look awesome. ill personally wait after the early access is done, as poe1 wasnt my thing. but ill gladly enjoy poe2, and who knows, maybe it might be super awesome :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I agree with you. I played this season a lot and it had fun. I’m pretty much done with it now, but there’s some steep competition on it’s way. They need to open those gates. They have this ‘slowly implement’ ideas or gate or progress in these goofy ways… like why couldn’t they tweak the GA drop rate midseason instead of waiting for next season?

It’s time for Blizz to put on their boxing gloves and get serious. And not about gating content and progress.

I agree with your thoughts on POE2. Overall I think this is gonna be good for the ARPG community. Both companies are going to try to out do each other. Both will have wins at times. Both will fall flat at times.

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if poe2 is that super big new shiny star as its been promoted here, they might put on their boxing gloves =P

on the midseason updates im with you btw, they should do a little more there in the future again. I for one am glad that s7 has a real seasonal thing going on again ^^

i mean, it were 3 seasons without a “real” season you know ^^

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I disagree. The creation of a standardized method of managing minions as Summons and the fact that they tie to the player’s lucky hit outcomes is huge. It’s massive. It changes the game. If they are being honest and every lucky hit translates this will cause an incredible amount of build diversity and also make some more obscure things like Fists of Fate move to B tier or better.

Lightning and Ice conjurations I think have the most gain from that system for Sorcerers but Necros and Druids will experience some serious power increases. There’s a lot of sleeper on-hit lucky hit effects that no one uses because individually they aren’t great but if they are really built up they become almost invaluable. I’m really curious what this will bring about.

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Not that long ago there was the same hype for Last Epoch…, I’ve purchased the support pack -leveled one character to 100 and never came back to it. I really hope POE 2 will be all that good as they advertised it. Will I try it - of course why not? Will it be better than D4? For me there is a space for many games to coexist. Its only better for us gamers.

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right now its only rogues that can use it right? FoF is a difficult unique, i mean, it kinda suits its name, you really need a nice roll on it, ideally on the lucky hit effect (and of course the unique effect, tho thats secondary, at least for rogues) so you dont have to crit on it during masterworking.

same

exactly really. its good to see users here, especially ones who arent super active, who arent… a weird hivemind ^^

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It is very limited, yes. And I think that will change if I am understanding the language correctly on summons. Being able to broaden the odds amongst n hits is going to shift how things run esp. given that any effect because effective for all entities. The focus will change with that unique I think from majorly trying to get things to proc to pushing more of a high rolling series. So things that had impractical odds but great rewards become a lot more interesting.

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My intuition is that POE2 is gonna be good. Hopefully the Rob community doesn’t destroy the culture with wanting to overpower all content and feel good about it.

My shred druid is gonna feel reaaaaly good next season, but the end game content is going to feel the same and my wolf is going to be stronger too.

Some ideas: NMD dungeons in T4, can click on all health shrines even if at full health, crazy amount events, and shrine events. Add new events, call bosses, summon all 4 mercs at times, add more options in infernal hordes, have more chaotic unpredictable events in infernal hordes, have random boss events in cities, Helltides can have a portal to an even more difficult helltide depending on demon or Matron kills (that could be barren with infrequent dangerous/rewarding mob packs or bosses).

For the random boss events they could add more of the bosses and people from the story (Asteroth, Meph dog, and the like), heck have increasing difficult waves of undead to some sort of master zombie, maybe a zombie event that effects towns, have a Fallen Citadel where we go after fallen Shaman to some master Shaman in his hut with waves of dangerous fallen trying to protect him. Some sort of snake kingdom. A citadel of unholy knights. All these ideas, have them randomly take over your infernal hordes. Sometimes your dungeon key takes you someplace unexpected. Heck, the flayers have a story, do something crazy with them.

But have stuff related to the plot, or giving some sort of story to the monsters in Sanctuary. Open world can be spammable and easy, but create places where there are real threats.

Have a respawning Stronghold.

I would like something in D4 that is truly creepy or nerve wracking. Something that is true to D4, but has a D1/DeadSpace feel where we are nervous to creep forward. The threatening feel will be constant, regardless of gear.

So those are some of my ideas.

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i mean, you know that will happen. its not a rob community btw, many builds rob shares are chinese builds, somehow they just got a better understanding about all the mechanics. rob gives credit to the builds he modifies btw, you should check that ^^

but yea, there will be a meta, and there will be builds that do a lot better than many others builds. i mean we are talking 12 classes in an arpg. have fun balancing that. ^^

i actually considered druid as well for the next season. i think last time i played it was s2. i feel druids might be cool in s7, but of course im not a theorycrafter. ill probably swim in safe waters first and start necro ^^

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I’ll say. They know more about duping than anyone that works at Blizzard.

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crazy, whod have known, rmt sites find loopholes to maximize their profit?
Thanks bob <3

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There are a lot of good buffs, some classes better than others.

But yeah, it’s just moar damage. The ultimate rank 5 bonuses are the best example of that. If you take a damage ultimate, then you’re putting 5 points into it anyhow. Why make a rank 5 bonus that does more damage when you could have just scaled the damage and made the rank 5 bonus something interesting.

The witch powers are the same way. The S2 vampire powers had cool powers that interacted with our builds and that’s why so many were made into items. So many of the S7 powers are “X damage” or a buff to the power doing X damage.

We will be stronger after this patch, but it didn’t do much to make the gameplay more interesting. The patch validates the idea that Blizzard thinks the game is in a good spot, which is a troubling notion for many.

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Looking like S7 is intentionally a vacation season.