Reminder: Reaper of Souls - Pre-Order Loot Revealed

Patch 2.0.1 Will be Live Tomorrow!

Happy tweets!

Important: Reaper of Souls Closed Beta and Patch 2.0.1 PTR Draw to a Close

Reaper of Souls - Pre-Order Loot Revealed

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Behold! Two epic new bonus items have just been spotted in the mortal realms, both of which will be granted in the future to anyone who pre-purchases the Reaper of Souls™ expansion digitally on Battle.net, or anyone who redeems a Reaper of Souls retail game key on or before March 31, 2014. 

Check them out below:

Wings of Valor: Summon the radiant wings of the Archangel of Valor for your characters in Diablo III.

Valla the Demon Hunter: Unlock Valla the Demon Hunter in Heroes of the Storm—our upcoming free-to-play online team brawler featuring iconic Blizzard characters, fast-paced combat, and epic battlegrounds. 

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If you've already digitally pre-purchased the Reaper of Souls expansion, either as the standard edition or the Digital Deluxe Edition, then you're all set! These bonus items will be granted to your Battle.net account as follows:

• The Wings of Valor will be automatically sent to your existing and any newly created Diablo III characters via an in-game notification starting March 20, 2014.
• Valla the Demon Hunter will be available once Heroes of the Storm has been officially released. Note that Heroes of the Storm is still deep in development and does not have an announced release date, but you can stay tuned to the official game site for future updates. Note also that pre-purchasing Reaper of Souls does not guarantee a spot in the eventual Heroes of the Storm alpha or beta tests.

If you pre-order Reaper of Souls at a retail store—either a physical standard edition or physical Collector's Edition—be sure to redeem your Reaper of Souls game key via your Battle.net account on or before 11:59 PM PST on March 31, 2014. If you redeem your game key after that date, your pre-order loot will be consumed by the fires of the Burning Hells and lost forever. While you have six days from the time the expansion launches on March 25 to the time you must enter your code, to be safe, you should secure your preorder today and be ready to input your game key on launch day.

For more information on the upcoming March 25 launch of Reaper of Souls, be sure to check out the official expansion website, and keep your demon-weary eyes glued to www.diablo3.com for the latest news on the game.

Until then, slay well, Nephalem.

- The Diablo III Team

Reaper of Souls Closed Beta and Patch 2.0.1 PTR Draw to a Close

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In preparation for the launch of patch 2.0.1, the Reaper of Souls™ Beta and Patch 2.0.1 PTR servers will be brought offline this evening at 5:00 p.m. PT. At that time, players will no longer be able to log in to the Beta or PTR client, all Beta and PTR accounts (including character information) will be reset, and both our Beta forums and PTR forums will be marked as read-only.

We'd like to thank everyone who has participated in the Reaper of Souls Beta and Patch 2.0.1 PTR. You've done an amazing job of testing, and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback you provided during this critical phase of development.

We look forward to releasing patch 2.0.1 to public shortly and encourage everyone to stay tuned to this website for exciting news and updates regarding the upcoming launch of Reaper of Souls!

Closed Beta Hotfixes

A small amount of hotfixes has been pushed to the Beta/PTR recently.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

[UPCOMING HOTFIXES]

• Defender of Westmarch: Fixing an issue where the Legendary affix wolf spawned would not pierce targets*

[LIVE HOTFIXES]

• Treasure Goblins can once again spawn an uninterruptable portal if they aren't slain quickly enough*

Monk:

• Mystic Alley (Earth Ally): Resolving an issue where the active portion of this ability would persist and behave erratically when changing zones*

Wizard

• Mirror Image: Fixed an infinite loop that could occur with Mirror Image when Archmage's Vicalyk was equipped*

Reaper of Souls First Look: Paragon 2.0

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 2.0.1 will introduce our updated Paragon leveling system (often referred to as "Paragon 2.0"), adding even more end-game character advancement and replayability. This update will affect all Diablo III accounts across all regions as the patch is implemented, and is currently available for testing on the Patch 2.0.1 PTR and Reaper of Souls Closed Beta. For those of you who haven't yet experimented with this new system, here's a first look.

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What's Changing?

The initial implementation of the Paragon system introduced in patch 1.0.4 was designed to provide players with additional end-game progression, offering bonuses for experience gained past the standard level cap. This system was created to accompany and complement the more innate item-based progression in Diablo III, which is all about finding powerful artifacts and putting them to use against the demonic legions of the Burning Hells.

While the original version of the Paragon leveling system achieved its many goals, with time players would max out at level 100 and no longer feel rewarded for vanquishing evil. With patch 2.0.1, we're making three big changes to the Paragon system that are aimed at giving you greater control over your hero, promoting variety in build options, and offering more character customization than ever before.

Change #1: Goodbye Level Cap

The first change we’re making with Paragon 2.0 is removing the level cap, so you will always be able to earn Paragon experience once you've reached max level. Play as much as you like—you'll always be able to earn more Paragon levels!

Change #2: Shared Paragon Levels

The second change is that Paragon levels are now account-wide per game mode (i.e. Normal and Hardcore). All Normal heroes on an account will share a Paragon level. Similarly, all Hardcore heroes on an account will share a Paragon level. After patch 2.0.1 goes live, any Paragon experience you gain on your Normal or Hardcore heroees will contribute to your account's Normal Shared Paragon level or Hardcore Shared Paragon level, respectively.

We made this change so players wouldn't feel obligated to continue playing the same hero over and over again in order to maximize their farming efficiency. We want players to have fun with the game, to experiment with different classes, and to feel rewarded for their time investment, regardless of what hero they’re playing. We also want everyone to fully enjoy the new content coming in Reaper of Souls—including the Crusader class—without feeling as though they’ve "wasted Paragon levels" on a previous hero. While only max-level heroes can earn shared Paragon experience and contribute to your account's shared Paragon level, all heroes (regardless of level) will be eligible to receive Paragon Points—our third major change to the Paragon leveling system.

Change #3: Paragon Points

As noted, the third change is that the rewards for gaining Paragon levels have drastically changed. In Patch 2.0.1, the static Magic Find, Gold Find, and class stat bonuses awarded for each Paragon level are being replaced by spendable Paragon Points. In the new system, whenever you gain a Paragon level, you will receive a Paragon Point to allocate at your discretion. Paragon Points are earned in four separate categories: Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility, and the Paragon level you earn will determine the category in which that Paragon Point can be spent. Paragon level 1 will give you a point to spend in a Core stat, Paragon level 2 will give you a point in Offense, Paragon level 3 will give you a point to spend in Defense, and Paragon level 4 will give you a point to spend in Utility. Paragon Point progression for all future levels will follow this same pattern (sometimes referred to as round-robin). In addition, each category also four different attributes. Spending points in these attributes will provide specific bonuses for your hero. 

Core points can be spent on your class's primary stat, Vitality, Movement Speed, or bonus Class Resource.

Offensive points focus on increasing your damage output and efficiency, and include Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Critical Hit Chance, and Critical Hit Damage.

Defensive points include stats that help improve your survivability. Options include bonus Life percentage, bonus Armor, Resist All, and Life Regeneration.

Utility points include more specialized stats that allow players to refine their builds. These points can be spent on boons like Area Damage, Resource Cost Reduction, Life on Hit, and Gold Find.

At present, all attributes in each category other than core stats (Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Vitality) have a cap on the number of points that can be allocated to them, which also means there is a cap to the total number of Paragon Points you can accumulate in three of the four categories. By the time you reach Paragon 800, you will have maxed the number of points that can be allocated to the Offensive, Defensive, and Utility categories and all future Paragon levels you earn going forward will grant you a Paragon Point in the Core stat category instead.

 Additional Details:

• The new Paragon system is account-wide; all heroes will benefit from the gained bonuses, including your newly created characters!
• Your account's Paragon Point pool is not shared between your heroes. Instead, heroes on your account will each get their own set of Paragon Points to spend independently (e.g. you can spend your Paragon Points differently for each hero). To provide an example, if your account's Normal Shared Paragon level is 100, all Normal heroes on your account will each get 100 Paragon Points to distribute as you see fit.
• All heroes will be able to contribute to Shared Paragon levels equally. There are no bonuses or burdens for Paragon leveling multiple heroes of the same class.
• Be sure to experiment! You can reset your Paragon Points at any time without having to pay a single gold coin. Respecs occur on the hero level, not the account level, so respeccing on one hero will not reset your Paragon Points on other heroes.

To provide an example, here's a new level 1 hero. This hero will begin with a Shared Paragon level of 127 as well as 127 Paragon Points, which can be allocated at will to the four different categories.

 

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Transitioning to the New System

Heroes who have gained Paragon experience under the old system will transition seamlessly to the new system. When Paragon 2.0 goes live with patch 2.0.1, we'll being adding up all the Paragon experience on each of your heroes and then using that combined total (the total amount of Paragon experience you have, not the total number of Paragon levels) to determine your Shared Paragon level. Again, this will be broken down by game type—Normal and Hardcore. Players can distribute their earned points through the Paragon interface, accessed by clicking the "Paragon" button located in your hero's character sheet.

 

Additional Details:

• Please note that legacy Paragon levels will not convert to Paragon 2.0 levels on a one-to-one ratio, and that the number of Paragon levels is not being totaled, just the amount of Paragon experience.
• The Paragon experience curve has changed with patch 2.0.1 as well. With the transition to Paragon 2.0, your Shared Paragon level will be at least as high as the highest Paragon level hero on your account.
• We have also decided that the valiant deeds of Hardcore heroes who died beyond level 60 deserve commemoration. Dead Hardcore heroes will contribute their cumulated Paragon experience to an account's Hardcore Shared Paragon level total.
• After Paragon 2.0 goes live, if you are level 60 and do not have the Reaper of Souls enabled on your account, you will continue to earn Paragon experience in the new system. This is because you are still technically at the level cap. However, if you are level 60 and decide to enable the expansion on your account, you will stop earning Paragon experience. This is because the expansion increases the level cap to 70. Once you reach level 70, you will start to accrue Paragon experience again from where you left off. (So, basically: Only max-level characters will be able to earn Paragon experience. If you don't have the expansion, max-level = 60. If you have the expansion, max-level = 70.)
• Under Paragon 2.0, if a character dies or is deleted, the amount of Paragon experience it contributed to your Shared Paragon level will not be lost. This is a benefit of having Paragon experience stored at the account level, rather than at the character level.
• Lastly, you will keep the portraits you have already earned in the first version of the Paragon system.

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Try Paragon 2.0 on the PTR

You can experience the new Paragon system coming in patch 2.0.1 on the PTR. Check out how your heroes feel with new stats, play around with different stat builds by spending Paragon Points, and check out the new Paragon progression curve. Once you’ve tried it out, visit the PTR forums to leave your feedback—we'd love to hear what you think!

Curse Weekly Roundup

In this week's roundup Jesse talks about the closure of Irrational Games, Valve's Anti Cheat System, WoW's level 90 character boost and more!

2.0 Might be Live in 2 Weeks

We have a possible confirmation from a Chinese interview with Josh Mosqueira that patch 2.0 will be live in about 2 weeks. We're keeping the "might" in the title, because, well, it's not written in blue. The information was brought to our attention by code90z in this topic.

In his post he has also hunted down a few replies from Blues on the Korean forums that confirm the "Wings of Valor" to be part of the digital purchase. Not exclusive to the "Digital Deluxe" or "Collector Edition", but just the standard package of the game. Even though the forums are official we'll still wait a bit until there's news from the EU/NA part of Blizzard. Until then you can read all about it in code90z's topic! 

Reaper Of Souls First Look: Clans And Communities

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

The demonic hordes of the Burning Hells and cold hatred of the Angel of Death are no match against the collective might of the nephalem. So, to help the heroes of Sanctuary rally their allies, we're adding two new social features to Diablo III in patch 2.0.1: Clans and Communities.

With Clans and Communities, we're providing players with easy and practical tools for finding and communicating with like-minded individuals who share a passion for demon slaying, loot hunting, experience farming, as well as other interests.

Both Clans and Communities are still in development and currently available for testing on the Patch 2.0.1 PTR and Reaper of Souls Closed Beta. For those of who haven't yet given them a test drive yet, here's a first look.

First Look: Clans

Clans are designed to provide players who share similar interests, gameplay schedules, or goals the ability to band together and form tight-knit groups. They're a great way to communicate with numerous friends at once, organize your play, and generally just keep in touch with those you game with the most.

With a member limit of 120 players, clans are intended to be smaller and invitation only. This means that while you can send a request to join a clan, you will not technically become a member unless you are invited or your request to join the clan is accepted. Also, while anyone can create or join a clan, you can only be a member of one clan at any given time.

How Clans Work:

The Clan window can be opened by clicking the "Communities" button located in the lower right-hand corner of the character selection screen, or by using the customizable hotkey (default Shift + O).

Creating a Clan:
To create a Clan, you will need to provide a Clan Tag (note: this tag will display next to each member's name in-game), a full name for the Clan, and then select a language.

You can also indicate whether or not you are looking for members. Note that if you are not looking for members, your Clan will not be displayed in "Find Clan" search results.

Finding and Joining a Clan:
To find and join a Clan, simply open the Communities tab and click "Find" at the top of the window. This option will only appear if you are not currently part of a Clan. 

When looking for a Clan to join, you will be able to narrow your search by language and word filters. Selecting a language will limit the search to display only Clans in that language. Similarly, if you add a word or series of words to the filter, only clans with that word in the tag or name will display.

First Look: Communities

Communities are designed to be a place where players can come together for any number of reasons, including playing the same class, frequenting the same fan sites, or living in the same geographical area. They're all about fostering relationships between like-minded people, with a keen focus on socialization.

Unlike Clans, Communities are intended to be much larger and more casual. They can be public or private, for example, and support a nearly unlimited number of members. In addition, while you can only join a single Clan, you can be a member of multiple different Communities at the same time.

How Communities Work:

Similar to Clans, the Community window can be accessed by clicking the "Communities" button located in the lower right-hand corner of the character selection screen, or by using the customizable hotkey (default Shift + O).

Creating a Community:
When creating a Community, you will be prompted to pick a language and a category for the Community that best describes it.

Categories include (but aren't limited to):

• Online Communities
• Class Specific
• Streamers/Personalities
• Internet Cafes
• Regional
• Schools
• Companies
• Hardcore    

You will also need to decide if the Community should be public or invite only.

Finding and Joining a Community:
Searching for a Community works much the same way as searching for a Clan; however, since you can be a member of multiple Communities at once, this option will always be available. To browse for Communities, open the Communities tab and click 'Find" at the bottom of the window. 

You can narrow your search by selecting a language, or by adding a word filter so that only Communities with that word in the name will be displayed in your search results.

You can also limit your search to only display Communities based on a specific category, and you have the option to also only show public Communities. 

The Clan & Community Window   

Once you've joined or created a Clan or Community, you will be able to open and browse its respective social window. The Clan and Community window is divided into three tabs: the News, Roster, and Settings.

The News Tab:

The News tab is the first tab you land on. Here you can find the latest information about your Clan or Community, as well as catch up on the recent activity of other members. 

You can filter the news you receive in the News tab to include several different types of information.

For Clans and Communities:

• Message of the Day: Notifies you of changes to the MOTD
• Clan/Community Information: Notifies you of changes to the Clan Information entry
• New Leader: Be among the first to know when Clan or Community Leadership changes hands

For Clans Only:

• Items: Notifies you when a clan member finds a Legendary item and allows you to check out its stats
• Achievements: Notifies you every time a clan member completes an Achievement
• Member Joined:  Notifies you when a new member joins the clan
• Member Left: Notifies you when a member leaves the clan
• Member Promoted: Allows you to track promotions within your clan

From the News tab (depending on your rank and permission level), you can also edit Clan or Community information, create news posts, and set the Message of the Day that Clan or Community members will see when logging into the game. 

The Roster Tab:

In the Roster tab, you will find a list of all Clan or Community members. The roster will show what heroes each member plays, their location in game, rank, and Achievement points. From here, you can also easily inspect member profiles.

The Settings Tab:

The Settings tab is mostly for Clan or Community leaders and officers. From this tab, you can alter the various permissions for each Clan or Community rank, such as the ability to add news, invite members, create the Message of the Day, and join chat channels. You will also be able to change the language of your Clan or Community, whether your Clan is looking for members, or if your Community is public or private. 

In addition to the News, Roster, and Settings tab, players who join a Clan or Community will gain access to a dedicated chat channel for the Clan and each Community. If you are the leader or an officer of a Clan or a Community, you will also gain access to an Officers Chat specific to that Clan or Community.

We hope that the Clans and Communities make it easier for players to have fun with friends—and make new friends!—while playing Diablo III. We look forward to collecting feedback from the brave souls participating in the Reaper of Souls Beta as well as those playing on the PTR for Patch 2.0.1. 

See you in game!

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard

[Bug] Items Disappearing From Stash

Order 1887030052 was for a cheap manticore that went unsold for 35 k.
I logged in about 11:15 right after maintenance and hit send to stash. The button stuck depressed but the item didn't go to my stash. When I clicked on the item in my completed tab the send to stash button remained depressed. After logging out and back in the item was gone. Not in my stash nor completed items.
It is a cheap item so I don't really care about it, but I am concerned that same fate might happen to more expensive items.

Hi Guys,
I just wanted to pop in here and let you know that we are indeed looking into this. When I have more information to provide, I will go ahead and reply again.
Thanks for your patience and all of the reports thus far. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Reason For Paragon Level "Drops" on PTR

Hi guys,I guess a "drop" in paragon levels was to be expected, since you need a lot more exp now to level up. With "drop" I mean that your current P-Level will definitely be lower now than it was before the latest adjustments, if you've re-copied your account to the PTR since the latest patch.However, in case anyone missed this:(http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11676477559?page=3#46 )

This is correct. Comparing your total paragon level from the previous PTR patch and the most recent patch doesn't really mean anything, other than to confirm that adjustments have in fact been made to the overall leveling curve. Even after the hotfix, the total amount of experience needed to level is still higher than it was previously, hence the "loss" since the last PTR patch. That said however, the amount of experience granted has also gone up drastically across the board, which in most cases will more than even things out.

I am going to go ahead and lock this thread since this is not a bug, and I don't want this to become a discussion point. I am glad I could help clear this up for you guys, and we really appreciate the reports.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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Reminder: Auction House Shutdown Coming Soon

As a reminder, we're shutting down the Diablo® III gold and real-money auction houses on Tuesday March 18, 2014. For more information, please see our official announcement and Auction House Update FAQ.

We'll provide additional technical details regarding the shutdown, including how this will affect active auctions, items in the Completed Tab, your existing Battle.net Balance, and more next week. Stay tuned! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Andrew Chambers RoS Beta Developer Playtest

Another RoS Beta Playtest with a developer was conducted live via Twitch. The streamers this time were Thunderclaww and ZiggyD and the developer was Andrew Chambers who heads development of the crusader class, crafting and the new infernal machine events.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Sup nephalem!

Hopping back in to let you all know that Andrew Chambers will be hanging out with Thunderclaww, Qelric, and ZiggyD this afternoon from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. PT to chat about all things Crusader, crafting, and Infernal Machine. 

Be sure to tune in to catch the stream live over at http://www.twitch.tv/thunderclaww or http://www.twitch.tv/ziggydlive, or stay tuned for links to the VOD in the coming days. 

Previous Dev Playtests:

• If you missed last Friday's live play session with Wyatt Cheng, Archon the Wizard, Moldran, and MVP Jaetch, you can check that out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UFV9XSYbeU
• If you missed yesterday play session with Travis Day, Monstrous, Druin, and overneathe, you can check that out here:http://www.twitch.tv/diablofans/b/504560780

May I ask a question?...what is the purpose of these streams?

I've noted it a few times, but here's the basic gist (stolen from dis blog, because why not?).

The goal behind this playtest was pretty simple: jump into the beta with three different members of the Diablo III community, play around with some of the expansion's new features, and enjoy a bit of casual conversation with fellow heroes of Sanctuary. The topic of that conversation exactly? Whatever Archon, Jaetch, or Moldran wanted.

It's a super laid back way for the community to connect with and ask questions of some of our developers, many of whom you've seen interviews with before and some that you haven't. In these playtests, you're likely not going to get any new information (since Reaper of Souls has been in beta for a while at this point), but you are likely to learn more about design philosophies and reasons behind certain changes as well as details about the developers themselves.

We'd like to continue doing these playtests in the future, too -- possibly even with a regular frequency -- giving more and different players the opportunity to chat with and actually play the game with the people who created it.

Edit: Or, you know, what that one Jaetch guy said.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Beta Playtest With Travis Day

There is now an official blog post about our stream with D3 game designer Travis Day and this is a good way for us to mention we've pushed the conversation summary for tomorrow. If you have a bit more than an hour however, give the stream a listen, it was tons of fun!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Yesterday, game designer Travis Day joined MVP Druin, MVP Monstrous (aka MrMonstrosity), and overneathe from Diablo Fans for a one-hour playtest in the Reaper of Souls™ beta. As with Wyatt's playtest, the goals of this particular session were pretty simple: jump into the beta with three different members of the Diablo III community, play around with some of the expansion's new features, and enjoy a bit of casual conversation with fellow heroes of Sanctuary. The topic of that conversation exactly? Itemization, itemization, itemization!*

If you weren't able to catch this playtest with Travis streamed live, you can still check out Diablo Fan's VOD of the session here:

 

We'll be hosting similar playtests with other members of the Diablo III system design team including Andrew Chambers, John Yang, and Don Vu all throughout the week, so be sure to stay tuned!

*A big thanks to Druin, Monstrous, overneathe, and overneathe's wife, Vicky, for coming armed to digital teeth with some epic questions. <3

[VOD] DiabloFans Stream With Travis Day 

DiabloFans had the chance to speak with Travis Day, while playing Reaper of Souls Beta, alongside MrMonstrosity and Druin. A summary of our conversation will be posted tomorrow, but for now you can check out the actual video below!

Launcher Update Incoming—What to Expect

The Battle.net launcher is getting updated and with it it seems we might be getting patch 2.0.1! An interesting observation - one of the new launcher pictures includes a Heroes of the Storm icon. Speculation time!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As we announced a little while back, with the upcoming release of patch 2.0.1, your Diablo III launcher will be automatically updated to our new desktop app for Battle.net. You can upgrade now if you like, but if you haven't done so yourself by the time patch day rolls around, here’s a quick heads up about what you can expect.

DOWNLOAD THE BATTLE.NET APP NOW

Step 1: Optimize!

When you start your Diablo III launcher for the first time after Patch 2.0.1 launches, you'll receive a quick tools update, and then you'll be prompted to begin the process of optimizing your Diablo III installation.

It could take a while—anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, even on a monster machine—but it's an important part of prepping for Patch 2.0.1 and Reaper of Souls.

Step 2: Download!

Next your Diablo III launcher will download the rest of the data you need—you'll see the usual red, yellow, and green data indicator during this process. How much data you'll need to download depends on how much background-downloading you've done already.

Step 3: Click Play and Log in to the Game

Once the Play button lights up, you can click it to enter the game and dive into the new Patch 2.0.1 content! Your launcher won't actually be updated to the desktop app Battle.net until the next time you start it up—so slay as many demons as you want, and then quit only when you've sated your bloodthirst.

Step 4: Start Up Diablo III Again

The next time you launch Diablo III, you'll be greeted with a pop-up screen letting you know your launcher is about to be updated to Battle.net.

Click Start Installation to start the process. 

 

It shouldn't take too long, but keep in mind you may need to click a Restart Now button at some point during the installation process.

Step 5: Welcome to Battle.net!

When you see the Battle.net login prompt, enter your account information, and click Log In.

Once you see the screen below, you're done!

Click Play from the app's Diablo III screen to get back into the game at any time (you won’t have to log in again), or launch the game from your desktop as usual. For more information on Battle.net, check out the Battle.net web page and Support article.

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Heads up for those who've already upgraded their launcher to Battle.net (or who plan to do so before Patch 2.0.1 launches):

On patch day, you will also have to go through a code-optimization process similar to what's outlined Step 1 above. Expect it to take 15 to 60 minutes or so, and keep in mind your computer might run a little slower than usual during the process.

That's it! Happy hunting!

DOWNLOAD THE BATTLE.NET APP NOW

Followers in Adventure Mode

A clarification was made on how Followers are acquired in Adventure mode.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Good news! Characters starting in Adventure Mode have access to all of the followers from level one, and you won't need to play campaign mode to have access to them in Adventure Mode.

Wait, was the change reversed and you can now play Adventure Mode without playing the Story at all?

You'll still need to complete the campaign mode at least once in order to unlock Adventure Mode, but once it's unlocked all of your characters of that game type (Normal or Hardcore) will be able to access it, even brand new ones.

Low Level Stat Rolls Are a Bug To Be Fixed

Stats sometimes still roll with values than they should on the Beta. Nevalistis popped up to let let everyone know that it's a bug which is going to be fixed.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Original Source)

Look at this little baby here ... I killed the Key Warden in Act 1 and was so happy to see the green beam ...
loot 2.0 and smart drop at its best ...
http://s14.directupload.net/images/140210/jwftuotj.jpg

So, this is actually a bug that should be fixed in the near future. It's a two-fold issue of unintended rolls that are currently happening on occasion:

• Level 60 weapons are sometimes rolling their damage rolls as a tier lower than intended.
• Some Legendary weapons aren't rolling a damage roll at all.

This should be fixed by the time 2.0.1 hits live servers. =)

Wyatt Cheng Playtest With Streamers Summary

The playtest Wyatt Cheng did with three streamers a few days ago got a nice video summary by Moldran who was among the three streamers mentioned.

Scheduled Game Maintenance - 2/18/2014

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

We will be performing maintenance beginning on Tuesday, February 18th at 1:00 AM PST and we expect the service to be available again at approximately 11:00 AM PST. During this time the game and many web services will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience.

Split Farming Concerns

Our fellow DiabloFans' member Jaetch made a video where he shared his ongoing concerns about the RoS Beta split farming "problem" (he puts it in quests himself). Let us know what your thoughts on the matter are and is there are a place for concern at this point.

Devs Experimenting with APoC

Some tweaking has been done on the PTR/Beta that developers haven't yet mentioned. Arcane Power on Crit has been receiving changes and the devs still aren't quite sure where the sweetspot is. Check out what Wyatt Cheng had to say about it on Reddit.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Source)

We are indeed experimenting with a reduction of AP-on-Crit.

1. At the moment the default AP regen is 10/s. A standard AP-On-Crit loadout increases this easily to 22 or more and it was definitely heading into the territory of spamming expensive spenders non-stop right out of the gate. Reaching that point should be a state you aspire to and work towards (usually with some legendary items or a sweet set bonus) - not something that's handed out virtually for free.
2. It completely negates the use of Signature spells, and we do strive for a rhythm of alternating between your left and right mouse buttons, as well as all 6 skills on your bar. It's okay if the most dedicated players reach a point where they no longer need a signature spell, but this should not be the case for people who just put on 2 easily-acquired items and a particular skill loadout.
3. Yes - we are pushing for people to do more than spam one skill. Running out of resource should be a very real concern - that's the point of having a resource system at all. You decide when to spend your resource. Sometimes you save it up, sometimes you spend it liberally. If you never run out of resource, what is the difference between a cheap spell on an expensive spell? In theory, a high resource cost spell should do more damage but you can't use it as much. A low resource cost spell you can use more often but does less damage. What we were seeing on both the Witch Doctor and the Wizard is that people simply spam their most expensive spell possible and hope the monsters are dead before you run out of resource.

The Barbarian had reduction to resource regeneration from passives as well. We'll continue to monitor the Witch Doctor, the Wizard and the Barbarian. We're concerned both with making sure all 6 classes have good power levels relative to one another, and we're also concerned that all 6 classes have a variety of fun playstyles available to them.

Quick follow-up for clarity. We intentionally did not modify any legacy items. We have a core value on the team to take great lengths not to modify items on the live game that people own. The reduction of AP-on-Crit applies to items dropped in Loot 2.0 only.

I'm worried that legacy AP-on-crit Sources/Hats might still be preferable to Loot 2.0 items.
For Sources you generally have 4 stats you care about:

• Damage: ~250 on live L60 and ~350 on beta L70
• Crit Chance: 10% on both live L60 and beta L70
• AP on Crit: 10 on live L60 vs 4 on beta L70
• Intelligence: 250 on live L60 vs 600+ (?) on beta L70

For Hats you generally have 4 stats you care about:

• Crit Chance: 6% on both live L60 and beta L70
• AP on Crit: 10 on live L60 vs 4 on beta L70
• Intelligence: 250 on live L60 vs 600+ (?) on beta L70
• Socket: 1 on both live L60 and beta L70

So the choice comes down to:
Legacy

• 20 AP on crit

vs
Loot 2.0

• 8 AP on crit
• 100 damage
• 600-1300 more Intelligence
• Skill % bonus on Hat
• Potential for new Legendary effects

I admit that a lot of the new Legendary effects are tantalizing, but gaining 2.5x more AP on crit and the ability to use your most damaging skills non-stop is hard to pass up. I'd honestly prefer a lifesteal-like reduction at level 70 just so I don't feel compelled to use legacy items (although I'm sure this isn't going to be too popular an opinion with some people).

It's okay if the most dedicated players reach a point where they no longer need a signature spell, but this should not be the case for people who just put on 2 easily-acquired items and a particular skill loadout.

In that case, have you considered making the rarer legendaries roll higher AP-on-crit values, approaching the legacy values? Or adding AP-on-crit to non-Source/Hat legendaries? Is there a Wizard set (torment-only?) that has AP-on-crit as its powerful set bonus?
EDIT: Also thanks a lot for addressing this thread directly!

Yes, you bring up a great point.

We discussed this internally and to be honest, we're "worried" that legacy AP-on-crit sources/hats might still be preferable. I put "worried" in quotes because we ran some analysis and looked at the new legendaries are we're fairly confident people will find Loot 2.0 items to be better but we've been wrong before and I'm willing to be wrong again.

As you mention - the new Legendary effects is one of the things we're banking on. We're hoping they are tantalizing enough to pull people forward.

We considered a lot of things. We considered a Lifesteal-like reduction going into 70. We considered nerfing the live items directly (but as previously mentioned, we're very loathe to do that). We considered significantly increasing AP costs on the most egregious spells. We considered removing AP-on-crit completely from orbs but significantly adding +flat damage so the likelihood people "graduated" out of them was extremely high (but this would cause a significant ripple effect of balance across all items in the game and all classes). We considered massive nerfs to proc scalars on the Wizard but that seemed unfairly across-the-board punishing just to fix the AP problem.

It's really hard to say for sure how things will play out, but it's an issue we'll be monitoring closely.

Regarding AP-on-crit for rarer legendaries. I think part of this nerf definitely leaves room for Wizard-set bonuses in the future. Maybe it will be AP-on-crit as a set bonus - though more likely we'll use some of the space we've freed up to do something more interesting like getting a freecast of Arcane Orb when you meet certain criteria or letting one of the cheaper spells become a generator in a manner similar to the Demon Hunter's Kridershot.

Wyatt - Should have bit the bullet a year ago in RoS development when you toyed with stat caps and converted to a Ratings System a-la WoW. APonCrit isn't quite %-age based, but could have been done. Just raise the rating required for 10 AP @ 70 higher. Problems across all legacy itemization obsoletetion solved! (No need to block legacy rerolling either)
ie - 10 AP on Crit converted exactly to 100 AP-on-Crit Rating.
@ 60 need 10 rating per 1 AP on Crit.
@ 70 need 25 rating per 1 AP on Crit.

So your legacy item with 100 AP-on-Crit-Rating still returns 10 @ level 60.... but only 4 @ 70. Item stays the same, new ilvl 70 items also have the same 100 rating cap, but with shiny new legendary affixes.
Was there a reason the Dev team did not want to convert to that type of system? It worked for Blizzard across many many expansions, and I know D3 folks really hate hearing about WoW... but c'mon.. Thunderfury? XD

We're trying to avoid ratings for the forseeable future on Diablo III. Believe me - it's tempting. Ratings have the advantage that you can continually scale up the stats by making them worth less per point when you move to higher levels. We could have done crit rating, crit damage rating, move speed rating, ApocRating, etc.

The downside of ratings is that it becomes extremely difficult to gauge your gear. Gear is already hard enough to evaluate - but we always have it in the back of our minds to try and make things better over time, not worse. Going with ratings is basically saying "No human being could hope to evaluate this gear, just go to d3up" (not that I have anything against d3up, but I think the game should be playable by savvy players without needing it). This is why the new properties we've added are things like cooldown reduction, resource cost reduction, and area damage. We're trying to provide stats that people can evaluate without needing a spreadsheet.

Internally we had people suggest things like "super-crit" or "crit-from-strength" as new stats to introduce in RoS. I'll let you imagine what these do. The problem is - these stats added complexity without making choices more interesting -and worse - they further made evaluating gear into a giant math problem.

TL;DR: Ratings let us scale gear but make gear harder to evaluate at a glance. The design team has decided to accept a lot of pain in order to keep the gear legible to humans.

"Diablo III Caramelldansen," by Jaetch

The Caramelldansen video by Jaetch we highlighted a few days ago reached the official forums and landed directly on the Diablo III front page! Check out the official post:

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In this edition of Artisan Showcase, get ready for a Sanctuary-themed blast from the past with "Diablo III Caramelldansen," by Community MVP (and all-around good guy) Jaetch.

Featuring all six Diablo III hero classes, everyone's favorite Angiris Council members, plus a few appearances by Leah, Deckard Cain, the Prime Evil, and a trove of treasure goblins, this tribute to one of the most adorable memes ever is sure to brighten your day. So sit back, relax, take a break from your usual farming routes, and check out the video below.

Not familiar with Caramelldansen? Click here!

Looking for more videos from Jaetch? Be sure to subscribe to his YouTube page and/or follow him on Twitter!

 

Are you working on any Blizzard fan creations? Make sure to tell us all about them over in our Community Creations forum!

Curse Weekly Roundup

The Curse Weekly Roundup is upon us, bringing a lot of interesting news from the gaming world! Check out the video for information on Titanfall Beta, Evolve, Goat Simulator, Flappy Birds, Candy Swipe and more!

Wyatt Cheng Playtest With Streamers

D3 dev Wyatt Cheng played RoS' Beta with 3 streamers today and shared some interesting info and thoughts. The streamers (you'll see links to their channels in the blue post) are our fellow DFans member Jaetch, Moldran and Archon!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Even if the team stay together the range to get the effect is by far to small! It's anough to be half a screen away to not get the bonus ... which sucks!

We've been noticing the same thing whenever we play in the office, and we’re looking to increase the range that party members receive the Pool of Reflection bonus (currently, we’re thinking that we’ll have them mirror the same radius that shrines use). We're also planning to update the mini-map icon so that you can tell when a Pool of Reflection well is depleted. We don't have a time frame for this change at the moment and the exact details are still subject to iteration, but we'll be sure to keep the community updated.

Wyatt Cheng just actually spoke about this topic over on Twitch. His playtest with Moldran, Archon the Wizard, and Jaetch is still in progress if you want to tune in:

http://www.twitch.tv/archonthewizard
http://www.twitch.tv/moldran
http://www.twitch.tv/jaetch

More On RoS Beta Invites

The epic discussion on RoS Beta invitation priorities goes on over at the official forums. Vaneras keeps on giving useful insight on the process.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Why not give Beta access to everyone at this point

It is mostly a capacity issue preventing this, but the signal to noise ratio matters as well—feedback gathering is usually best when you hit a "sweet spot" balance between the number of testers and the diversity of testers.

Let players try new features and decide if they want the expansion or not.

But that is not really the primary purpose of a beta though. To me it kind of sounds like that what you are really asking for is a demo? Or am I wrong?

As in general to have separate Beta and PTR is strange.

I can see why you would think that if the expansion content is the only thing that really matters to you. But the separation is necessary because the revamped systems need to be tested and work well both in the "vanilla" environment as well as the expansion environment.

One more reason to allow more(not just +3000 invites) people into Beta, will allow to stress test servers before Expansion launch.

There are other ways to perform stress tests than merely "opening the flood gates" and making the beta available to everyone who wants it. In fact, we have been doing a lot of stress testing on the PTR and beta already.

So if you are still sending out invites means you haven't hit that "sweet spot", or not?

We are in a fairly good spot now as far as I'm aware, but since the "sweet spot" is not something you can easily define or quantify with a specific number, people are invited in waves as long as we feel that we are still getting a good "signal to noise ratio".

I believe the primary purpose for beta is to find maximum amount of bugs at his stage before final product is presented to masses. If this is the same for you, then i don't understand why invites are send randomly.

The purpose of the beta is more than just finding bugs, it is just as much about tuning and polishing the gameplay so that it feels good to play for as large a part of our audience as possible. Since our audience is so diverse, the random invitations ensures that we get more different types of gamers into the beta, and not just the most active and hardcore gamers. I mentioned this in my previous post as well.

Random doesn't help your most loyal fans feel appreciated when you distribute the coveted beta keys in this way Van.

I say this knowing you to be a man of principles and character and NOT autonomous (or possibly even influential) in the granting of beta keys - but you might pass on the sentiment to those that do have discretion in the selection process.

Yep I do understand that, I really do, so trust me when I say that it is not at all our intention to make you guys feel unappreciated or dismissed. 

I am aware that our beta invitations are coveted by many, and I honestly think that is both a curse and a blessing. It is a blessing because we see that there are so many people out there who are passionate about our games and who are willing to spend their time helping us testing our games, but it is curse because people tend to think of beta invitations as a tokens, which sucks when it is not possible to give one to everyone who wants one.

Blizzard And DeviantART Present: Reaper of Souls Fan Art Contest

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

You've fought bravely against the forces of the Burning Hells, banishing the Prime Evil and restoring Hope to the High Heavens. However, a new terror awaits. Soon, the sickening forces of Death will advance on the mortal realm of Sanctuary, ushering in a new age as Diablo® III: Reaper of Souls™ is unleashed upon the world.

The time has come for heroes to rise to a new challenge and prove their mastery of both the sword andthe pen. So, crack open your stash of art supplies, nephalem, and get ready to get crafty! 

To celebrate the upcoming launch of Reaper of Souls, Blizzard Entertainment and deviantART have joined forces to bring you a truly Legendary fan art contest. With over $11,000 worth of prizes and a two-night trip to Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA up for grabs, we're calling all talented artisans from Caldeum to Kehjistan to take up their styluses in defense of the realm.

Your challenge, brave heroes, is to channel your arcane power and create an illustration depicting one or more central figures of the expansion getting ready for the coming conflict against the Angel of Death. These figures may include the six heroes of Sanctuary or even Malthael himself.

      

Your entries will have a chance to be seen not only by the millions of passionate Diablo players from around the globe, but also by the teams at both Blizzard and deviantART. In addition to scoring some truly epic prize packages that even the pickiest treasure goblin would be jealous of, the top 25 winners will also have their art displayed at Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine, California, with the top three winners hand-selected by Christian Lichtner— art director of Diablo III.

We've shared some of the tantalizing contest details below, but make sure to head on over to deviantART’s contest page for further information as well as the official rules and submission guidelines.

Best of luck to all artisans, and may the most devious designs win!

---

Contest Prizes:

1st Place

• A two night trip to Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA to meet the artists and developers of Diablo III
• A framed print of the winning work signed to the artist by the Diablo III Creative Team
• $5,000 USD
• Signed boxed copy of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector's Edition
• 8,000 deviantART Points
• 1-year Premium Membership to DeviantART.com

2nd Place

• A framed print of the winning work signed to the artist by the Diablo III Creative Team
• $3,000 USD
• Signed boxed copy of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector's Edition
• 4,000 deviantART Points
• 6-month Premium Membership to DeviantART.com

3rd Place

• A framed print of the winning work signed to the artist by the Diablo III Creative Team
• $1,000 USD
• Signed boxed copy of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector’s Edition
• 4,000 deviantART Points
• 6-month Premium Membership to DeviantART.com

22 Semi-Finalists

• Signed boxed copy of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector's Edition
• 1,000 deviantART Points 

Contest Rules:

• Show one or more central figures of Diablo III getting ready for the coming conflict against Malthael. You may choose figures from the six heroes of Sanctuary or even Malthael himself!
• Entrant must be at least 17 years old as of February 13, 2014;
• Entrant may reside anywhere in the world;
• Entries must be received by 11:59:59 p.m. PT (Los Angeles Time) on March 13, 2014 and be submitted through the contest gallery on deviantART;
• Membership to www.deviantart.com is required to enter the Contest. Membership towww.deviantart.com is free. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THE CONTEST;
• Your submitted entry is to be an original artwork inspired by Diablo III in the form of a portrait or an illustration showing a central figure from one of the six classes of Heroes of Sanctuary or of Malthael preparing for the coming conflict;
• You may use any visual medium excluding cosplay, photographs, or moving images. Photographs of an entry made in another medium are acceptable. Licensed brushes and textures are permitted. Read the official rules for more details;
• You may reference but not actually duplicate visual materials provided or referenced in the Asset Page;
• Your entry must be in the form of a single JPG or PNG file at least 2000 pixels and at a minimum of 72 dpi;
• Other requirements and restrictions apply, please read the official rules carefully. 

Contest Deadlines:

• February 13, 2014 - Diablo III Fan Art Contest on deviantART Launches
• March 13, 2014 - Art Submissions Close at 11:59:59 p.m. PT on March 13, 2014
• March 18, 2014 - 25 Contest Semi-Finalists Announced
• April 2, 2014 - Top 3 Contest Winners Announced

Are you planning to enter this epic fan art contest? Let us know below, and be sure to share your works in progress and final creations with us on Twitter using the hashtag #D3DA!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Fallen are red,
Reapers are blue. 
Check out this seriously sweet art we've made for you. <3 

---

 

"Be Mine" by Anessa Silzer, 3D Artist - Diablo III

"Till Death Do Us Part" by Christian Lichtner, Art Director - Diablo III | base art by John Polidora

"Heart Struck" by Kevin K. Griffith, Senior 3D Artist - Diablo III 

---

Happy Valentine's Day, nephalem! <3

7 Reasons to Date a Gamer

In the spirit of Valentine's Day Jess and Andrew from Curse have created a nice video showcasing the great qualities a gamer has, which lead to a successful relationship!

[Datamined] Collector's Edition Imperius Wings

Some small, but pretty interesting strings crossed our eyes in the latest patch datamine. While we can't make any concrete conclusions from strings only, they are worth noticing.

• x1_ImperiusWingsBuff_name - Collectors Edition Buff
• x1_AngelWings_Imperius - Wings of Valor

• x1_AngelWings_Imperius - "With valor, all things become possible. Strike with every ounce of righteous wrath you possess, and you shall be lifted on high by wings of valor." —Imperius

PTR/Beta Invites Discussion

Some heated discussions have arisen over at the Official Forums regarding the methods PTR/Beta invites are given out through.

Originally Posted by Blizzard

If youre not a streamer providing free mass advertising and hype forget it...

Not true. It is correct that we have invited a number of streamers and fan sites into the beta, but I can assure you that the greatest number of beta invitations by far have been sent out in waves via the battle.net opt-in system.

just wondering if its totally random who gets a key,

It is random. Basically it's like this; any player who has opted in for the beta on their battle.net account page has a chance to be invited.

i seem to recall reading something about the more active players being the first in line but that may just have been wishful thinking or a dream.

That was a one time event that happened before the closed beta had begun, back when it was the Friends and Family beta. 

We typically do not invite players who've opted for beta testing into our very early Friends and Family betas(also sometimes called alphas), but we made an exception with the Reaper of Souls Friends and Family beta—In this case we chose to grant beta access to 3000 of the most active Diablo III players who've opted in for beta testing together with Blizzard employees (and the friends and family members of Blizzard employees) (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
----------------

i doubt any one from EU will get invite..

Don't be so sure ;-)

we are forgoten here,not even a topic from blue about that ..

EU is not forgotten! This latest PTR/beta patch was kind of an "emergency patch" that had to be brought live faster than usual, and as such (mostly due to time zone differences) it was not possible to get the patch notes translated into the 6 other languages we support in Europe before it was brought live. Once the 6 translations are complete, the news of the patch will be posted in all 7 EU Diablo sites/forums as well.

Maybe this time some of us european get more invites 

Beta keys were distributed to European players during the last beta waves as well, but it is true that a lot of the people who really wanted beta access weren't among the lucky ones who did get a key.

any word to confirm that they keys have been sent out ?

I am not 100% sure, but I believe the next wave has yet to happen. I did not see an eta on this, so all I can say right now is to keep an eye on your inbox.

Playing Blizzard games for the last 9 years, not once have i or anyone on my friends list (excluding MVPs) received any beta invite to any of your games.

That does sound like a case of bad luck indeed, and you do have my sympathies, but I feel it important to say here that just because you and your friends have been unfortunate not to get a beta invitation so far, that doesn't mean that European players aren't getting invited into our beta tests. I of course don't know the exact number of friends of yours that you are referring to here, but I am fairly sure that number pales in comparison to the number of people who have opted in for the beta... chances unfortunately are that you and many other players might never be one of the lucky ones getting a beta invitation after having opted in. This goes for players in all regions just so you know.

Usually right from the point when we announce a new game or a new expansion, we get flooded with beta key requests right from the start, and when we announce the option to opt-in for beta testing, the interest grows even further and the number of opt-in numbers tend to surge even higher after that. Basically what I am trying to say is that whenever we send out beta invites across the different regions (even when we send them out in huge numbers), the number of beta opt-ins are always ever increasing and far greater than the number of beta testers we can accommodate. 

So i'll keep my doubts about how you guys send invites here in the EU, similar to how ignored the EU forums are compared to US for every game.

You are of course welcome to keep your doubts about how we distribute beta invitations, but I would like to clarify that the EU forums are far from ignored. I would like to remind you that we actually have 7 battle.net forums in 7 different languages in Europe, and each of those 7 EU forums have dedicated people reading them and gathering feedback every single day.

Vaneras, how come players with almost no time invested into the game gets a key, while those that has invested much get nothing? Is there an easy explanation to it, is the invites totally random from the opt-in db?

Yup it is pretty much random, and it therefore happens in some cases that less active people might get an invitation. Plenty of very active players are in the beta though, so it is not like only less active casual players have access.

how is this fair? And what kind of feedback do you expect from a player who barely played D3V?

How is it fair? Well that depends on how you look at it.

Diablo III (and all of our other games really) are made for a large audience of players, and not only super active and hardcore gamers. A player who have barely played the original game at all can offer truly valuable feedback on the newcomer experience and such a player can give us a great insight in how the gameplay feels like for the casual gamer. When you are intimately familiar with a game as hardcore players and developers often are, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the newcomer and casual experience, so getting feedback from less experienced players in the beta is quite valuable indeed. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Paragon Changes Calculations

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

They're buffing/nerfing based on data, and nothing else. Everybody was spec'ing into crit, so they nerfed crit.

Data plays a factor because it tends to send up flags about certain issues, but it isn't the only definitive reason we make changes. Data tends to highlight areas for us to investigate, as a notification of “hey, we should probably look at this again.” From there, we'll go over the math, theorycrafting, internal play tests, and external play tests and verify if we need to take action. In this particular case, mathematically speaking, the weight of Paragon points was a too favorable for Critical Hit Chance. It was brought down to be more in line, point for point, with the other Paragon stat choices.

Well ... the math actually works out pretty well in favor of this change.
Assume 40CHC 400CHD 30IAS 15% <elemental> damage and 50% of your total damage is <element>
5% CHC = 7.69% increased total dps
50% CHD = 7.69% increased total dps
10% IAS = 7.69% increased total dps
15% <elemental> = 6.98% increased total dps
As you can see, these stats are all relatively competitive with each other.

This was, and is, the intent for the Paragon system. We don't want there to be a mathematically clear choice in terms of points spent, and having some stats be more valuable for different builds is certainly a desirable outcome. Some stats might squeak ahead by a small margin, simply because they inherently scale differently, but we do want to try to get them as close as possible.

Paragon "attack speed" actually adds attacks per second to the base speed of the weapon, before all other attack speed bonuses are applied multiplicatively. Ala vanilla Echoing Fury. So a two-handed axe always gets exactly 10% bonus from 50 paragon points, while a dagger only gets 6.67%.

This is actually a bug. It should be fixed before the 2.0.1 patch comes to live realms.

Reminder: Upcoming Beta & PTR Patch, If You Notice A Change NOT In The Notes - Ask, More on Clans, Blizzard Gear Store Grand (Re)Opening!

New Patch for 2.0.1 PTR and Closed Beta Now Available

A new patch has hit!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch notes are listed below for the next phase of our PTR and Closed Beta for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. Please note that changes that apply to the PTR environment also apply to the Closed Beta.

• PTR Patch Notes
• Closed Beta Patch Notes

Diablo III PTR Patch 2.0.1 - v.2.0.0.21962

Below you will find the most current PTR patch notes for 2.0.1. Please note that this is not the final version of the 2.0.1 patch notes and that many changes may not have been documented or described in full detail.

To provide feedback on these changes or report new bugs, please visit the appropriate PTR forum:

• General Feedback
• Feature Feedback
• Class Feedback

To report any issues you may experience while playing, please visit the PTR Bug Report forum.

Table of Contents

• General
• Classes
  • Barbarian
  • Demon Hunter
  • Monk
  • Witch Doctor
  • Wizard

---

GENERAL

• Damage from monsters has been increased slightly per Difficulty level increase
• Bug Fix: Resolved several issues that caused the client to crash when viewing the tooltips for items with certain Legacy affixes
• Bug Fix: Resolved an issue where many Rare items would not properly display their name

 

CLASSES

• Barbarian
  • Active Skills
    • Bash
      • Increased base skill damage from 165% to 170% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Instigation
        • Reduced bonus Fury generation from 3 to 2
    • Cleave
      • Reduced base skill damage from 160% to 150% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Reaping Swing
        • Reduced bonus Fury per enemy hit from 2 to 1
      • Skill Rune - Broad Sweep
        • Reduced damage from 230% to 210% weapon damage
    • Weapon Throw
      • Increased base skill damage from 135% to 150% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Mighty Throw
        • Increased damage from 200% to 210% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Balanced Weapon
        • Reduced bonus Fury generation from 3 to 2
    • Hammer of the Ancients
      • Skill Rune - Smash
        • Reduced damage from 680% to 640% weapon damage
    • Earthquake
      • Skill Rune - Mountain's Call
        • Increased the cooldown from 45 to 50 seconds
  • Passive Skills
    • Animosity
      • Reduced increased Fury generation from 20% to 15%
    • Superstition
      • Reduced Fury granted on taking damage from 3 to 2
    • No Escape
      • Increased damage bonus from 20% to 25%
      • Reduced range required from 25 to 20 yards
    • Relentless
      • Increased health threshold from 30% to 35%
    • Juggernaut
      • Increased healing received when Stunned, Feared, Immobilized, or Charmed from 15% to 20% of maximum Life
• Demon Hunter
  • Active Skills
    • Preparation
      • Skill Rune - Invigoration
        • Increased max Discipline increase from 10 to 15.
      • Skill Rune - Punishment
        • Reduced Hatred gain from 100 to 75.
      • Skill Rune - Battle Scars
        • Increased Life gain from 35% to 40%.
• Monk
  • Active Skills
    • Deadly Reach
      • Increased base skill damage to 109%
      • Increased third hit knock up chance to 50%
      • Skill Rune - Scattered Blows
        • Increased damage to 156%
    • Sweeping Wind
      • Increased base skill damage to 30%
      • Skill Rune - Cyclone
        • Reduced Cyclone damage to 23%
    • Inner Sanctuary
      • Increased base skill duration to 6 seconds
      • Skill Rune - Sanctified Ground
        • Increased duration to 8 seconds
• Witch Doctor
  • Active Skills
    • Spirit Walk
      • Skill Rune - Honored Guest
        • Reduced amount of Maximum Mana gained from 30% to 20%
    • Zombie Charger
      • Skill Rune - Lumbering Cold
        • Damage reduced to 196% per bear
        • Zombie Bears now spawn 4 yards away from the player
    • Firebats
      • Skill Rune - Cloud of Bats
        • Damage reduced to 425%
    • Poison Dart
      • Base skill damage increased from 140% to 155%
      • Skill Rune - Splinters
        • Damage increased from 60% to 65%
      • Skill Rune - Flaming Dart
        • Damage increased from 240% to 275%
    • Corpse Spiders
      • Base damage increased to 216% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Blazing Spiders
        • Damage increased from 230% to 259% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Leaping Spiders
        • Damage increased from 210% to 238% weapon damage
    • Plague of Toads
      • Base damage increased from 175% to 190% weapon damage
    • Firebomb
      • Damage increased from 140% to 155%
      • Skill Rune - Pyrogeist
        • Damage increased from 26% to 28% (560% over 6 seconds)
  • Passive Skills
    • Blood Ritual
      • Mana costs reduction reduced from 15% to 10%
    • Spiritual Attunement
      • Mana maximum reduced from 20% to 10%
• Wizard
  • Active Skills
    • Energy Twister
      • Increased base skill damage to 1000%
      • Skill Rune - Raging Storm
        • Increased combined twister damage to 1935%
      • Skill Rune - Wicked Wind
        • Increased damage to 743%
      • Skill Rune - Storm Chaser
        • Increased damage per stack to 196%
    • Ray of Frost
      • Increased base skill damage to 510%
      • Skill Rune - Black Ice
        • Increased damage to 1204%
    • Disintegrate
      • Increased base skill damage to 511%
      • Skill Rune - Volatility
        • Increased damage to 750%
      • Skill Rune - Entropy
        • Increased damage to 649%
      • Skill Rune - Chaos Nexus
        • Increased damage to 115%
    • Arcane Torrent
      • Increased base skill damage to 573%
      • Skill Rune - Death Blossom
        • Increased damage to 1452%
      • Skill Rune - Arcane Mines
        • Increased damage to 688%
      • Skill Rune - Cascade
        • Increased damage to 582%

Back to Top of PTR Patch Notes

Reaper of Souls Closed Beta - v.2.0.0.21962

Below you will find the most current Closed Beta patch notes for Reaper of Souls.

To provide feedback on these changes or report new bugs, please visit the appropriate Closed Beta forum:

• General Feedback
• Feature Feedback
• Class Feedback

To report any issues you experience while playing, please visit the Reaper of Souls Bug Report forum.

Table of Contents

• General
• Adventure Mode
• Classes
  • Barbarian
  • Crusader
  • Demon Hunter
  • Monk

ATTENTION: Please note that the Closed Beta also includes all changes from the PTR.

---

GENERAL

• Bug Fix: Quest rewards are now properly provided when completing key quests in Act V

 

ADVENTURE MODE

• Bug Fix: Resolved an issue where accepting a placeholder message that popped up when interacting with Asheara in Act II would cause the client to disconnect

 

CLASSES

• Barbarian
  • Passive Skills
    • Earthen Might
      • Reduced Fury generation from 40 to 35
• Crusader
  • Active Skills
    • Steed Charge
      • Base ability cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds
      • Skill Rune - Ramming Speed
        • Damage increased from 350% to 475% weapon damage per second
      • Skill Rune - Nightmare
        • Damage increased from 150% to 550% weapon damage per second
      • Skill Rune - Draw and Quarter
        • Damage increased from 20% to 125% weapon damage per second
    • Shield Glare
      • Skill Rune - Zealous Glare
        • Wrath per target reduced from 12 to 9
    • Fist of the Heavens
      • Skill Rune - Divine Well
        • Damage for subsidiary bolts reduced from 32% to 20%
        • Damage ticks more consistently with less random variance
      • Skill Rune - Heaven's Tempest
        • Damage increased from 65% to 150% damage per second in the pool area
    • Blessed Hammer
      • Skill Rune - Thunderstruck
        • Damage reduced from 50% to 40%
      • Skill Rune - Burning Wrath
        • Damage increased from 85% to 95%
    • Akarat's Champion
      • Base ability cooldown reduced from 120 seconds to 90 seconds
  • Passive Skills
    • Heavenly Strength
      • Movement speed penalty increased from 10% to 15%
• Demon Hunter
  • Active Skills
    • Vengeance
      • Increased base skill damage of the rockets from 30% to 40% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Personal Mortar
        • Increased damage of mortars from 135% to 150% weapon damage
      • Skill Rune - Seethe
        • Reduced Hatred gain per second from 15 to 10
      • Skill Rune - From the Shadows
        • Increased the damage of the shadows from 80% to 120% weapon damage
• Monk
  • Active Skills
    • Epiphany
      • All Runes
        • Reduced cooldown to 60 seconds
        • Reduced Spirit Regeneration per Second to 20

Upcoming Beta & PTR Patch

A new patch is bringing several changes to the RoS Closed Beta and PTR.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

In order to help resolve some critical bugs and implement class tuning changes, we will be pushing out a new Beta and PTR patch later today. This patch will be relatively small, and a miniature patch note update will be provided once the patch is live.

As a result of some testing that will accompany this patch, character progress on the Beta/PTR may be affected. See the below list for details.

• Later this week (after the Beta/PTR patch goes live), we will be performing some tests on our storage system that maintains inactive Diablo III accounts. 
  
  • This may result in the loss of up to 24 hours' worth of progress on the Beta or PTR for some players.
  • We anticipate the number of affected Beta/PTR accounts will be extremely low, and should only impact those who play within a very small window of time.

In addition, shortly after testing has completed, we will be adding an additional wave of new players to the Closed Beta. Keep an eye on your inbox for an invite if you've opted in!
We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your continued participation in the Closed Beta and 2.0.1 PTR!

If You Notice A Change NOT In The Patch Notes - Ask

Nevalistis invited anyone who feels like a change was made and not described in the Patch notes, to just go ahead and ask about it on the official forums. Some of the "ninja" changes are bugs, others are really simply missed.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

- Kriedershot now doesn't generate hatred.

This actually is a bug. We're aware of it, and it should be fixed for the 2.0.1 patch.

- Profane Pauldresn affix straight up removed (ditto the similar bracers). How exactly was this OP?

This wasn't a case of the affix being OP so much that it was a duplicate bonus that landed on the wrong item. It was meant to be a bonus on only the Reaper's Wraps (which also had an issue that was then hot fixed, as noted in our current hotfix list). The Legendaries that suddenly had 4/1 Primary/Secondary stats are a PTR/Beta artifact of making these bug fixes. New versions of these items should properly roll 4/2.

Also bear in mind that not all Legendaries are meant to come with an "orange text" affix. The exchange is that some have higher overall stat roll possibilities, the ability to roll a stat not normally found in that slot, or a guaranteed stat roll that is often at a higher value than normally attainable. Sometimes, it’s a combination of those qualities.

Many other legendaries were given significant internal cooldowns or proc rate reductions.

There were a slew of items that were missing internal cooldowns or had internal cooldowns that weren't functioning at all. 

The majority of these "stealth nerfs" were actually bug fixes, and because there are so, so many of them that happen each patch, some of them get missed in the patch note process – at least for beta. I know that sounds super tinfoil hat-inducing, and that’s not at all the intent. I'm grateful for the opportunity to clarify these things though, and I appreciate the patience while I track down the stray information. We've already made some adjustments to internal communication regarding these kinds of changes for beta notes, which should result in fuller, more robust beta patch notes in the future. =) I’ll also make sure that these fixes are added to the current notes. 

If something doesn't sound or look right, or wasn't in the patch notes, just ask! That's what we're here for. We all pay very close attention to your experiences with each new patch, and if something's not right, we'll make sure the appropriate folks are notified and look into it. As a favor, though, I’d like to request less conclusion-leaping and more “Is this intended?” asking. ;P

Clans and Communities Direction and Parallels With D2

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Then we only need the old lobby system back so it's actually an online game and not just a mission game with a co-op feature.

Well, the future Clans and Communities feature should offer many of the social elements that some people say they are missing from the old Diablo II lobby system. The Clans and Communities feature will make it much easier for people to come together and form groups based on shared interests and preferred gameplay.

The game market has changed, the number of players has changed, the way they play has changed, there are new concepts, etc. It has been 15 years, things are different now than back then.

This is very true.

This is about the actual game, some ideas from the top of my head:

While I don't really have any comments on your ideas in particular, I do want to thank you for sharing them.
People are more than welcome to post their thoughts on the kind of gameplay they think could be cool to have Diablo III, because such posts often lead to really good discussions with a lot of interesting feedback that we can forward to the developers :-)

Problem with new Clans and Communities is exactly pointed in its name. You have to actually be in that clan or community to see players heroes, roster etc.

I think chat system should be enlarged so that if you are in menus and in said chat channel its full screen and you can see players, interact with their heroes more and have ability to create particular games. Options: monster slaying, brawling, keywarden are very limited and not enough to create full social experience.

Sure, you will need to join a clan and/or communities with other like-minded people with the same interests as you if you want to have easy access to hero rosters and such, which I am sure will require some getting used to for some people, but clans and communities are intended to make it much easier to find and join groups of players that share your interests. For an example, if you are interested in brawling, you will be able to join or create a community focused on that, and everyone who are a part of that community will share a dedicated chat channel and they will have access to tools that will help facilitate and organise brawling groups.

Your feedback on the size of the chat channels is also perfectly valid of course, so if you or anyone else for that matter would like to share your "quality of life woes" with the chat system in general, then please feel free to post more about why it is a "quality of life woe" for you and what you would like to be different if things could be improved upon. We are always looking for "quality of life" feedback :-)

Blizzard Gear Store Grand (Re)Opening!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

We've recently (re)opened the Blizzard Gear store, and you're invited to shop 'til you drop!

The Blizzard Gear store is the place to go if you're looking for official Diablo, Hearthstone, StarCaft, or World of Warcraft merchandise. We've got tons of cool stuff for sale including official artwork, books and comics, toys and statues, apparel and accessories, and even collectibles from past BlizzCons. Perhaps you're looking for a skateboard branded by the Lord of Terror himself? Well, we've got those right here. 

To celebrate our grand (re)opening, we're offering one hell of a promotion. All you need to do is spend $50 in the Blizzard Gear store and you'll get free standard shipping. . .world-wide!

But wait -- there's more.

A number of select items in the Blizzard Gear store have also been discounted for a limited time. You'll find special prices all over the store, including nice savings on the Alliance t-shirt, the Horde t-shirt, theDiablo III Reaper of Souls backpack, and the Steelseries World of Warcraft wireless MMO gaming mouse. 

  

Portals close soon, and all of our grand (re)opening promotions are set to end on February 17, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Crafting Mats Might Get Their Own Slots and Auto Pickup

Several VERY interesting ideas are being thought over by the devs regarding crafting mats and their handling. As usual, keep in mind nothing is certain and final at this point! 

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Thanks for the great feedback summary, Khaoz! I'm glad to hear it was a fun transition, and that it worked well for you. I was sure to read through all of your post, and took notes to pass along. 

- PLEASE, make gems and crafting mats be picked up automatically. I obviously want to get all of them (just like gold and health potions) and it's very annoying to click-click-click them everywhere. Also, all them became fixed items in my inventory. They will be looted anyway and they will stack to 1000, so why bother stashing or w/e? 

This is one of many solid suggestions we’ve seen regarding improvements that could be made to the crafting resource management system. On the whole, we agree with your feedback and are currently working on some different ways to help streamline the process of picking up, storing, and using crafting resources.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the caveat that any changes we make to crafting material management at this point would come after Reaper of Souls ships. With that in mind, here’s a few ideas we’re tinkering with to help get you thinking about some of the cool possibilities: 

• All crafting materials would be moved to a currency-style storage in the UI. Think something similar to Blood Shards.
• All crafting materials would become auto pickup, except for LEGENDARY crafting material. (Legendary crafting material would still be automatically stored as a currency, but players must click on it to pick it up.)
• All crafters would pull crafting materials from this storage area for recipes.
• Crafting materials that the player doesn’t currently own would appear in grey text with a 0 counter.
• Players could mouse over the icons of all crafting material to get the full tooltip of the item. This includes greyed out ones.
• Currently, we do not intend to store gems in this way because it would make socketing items feel clunky.

Note that this is all still a work in progress and thus subject to lots and lots of iteration. Again, while this is something that won’t make the launch of the expansion, we still wanted to acknowledge that we’ve seen your feedback, agree with it, and are already starting to act on some of your suggestions.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard

[BUG] Imperial Gems Not Dropping In Master Difficulty

I'm wondering if this is bugged or not.

I double checked this (personally, I didn't find any until Torment II), and it turns out that Imperial gems dropping in Master difficulty is bugged. We're going to correct it in an upcoming hotfix, but I don't have an ETA yet on when that will happen. We'll be sure to update the Closed Beta Hotfixes thread, though, so keep an eye on it if you're interested. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
-------

Bloodshard Drop Rate Concerns
When we were investigating split-farming concerns, one of the biggest issues was Kadala's generosity. This contributed to the split-farming issue, and in order to address it as a whole, we drastically lowered her drop rate to make sure her enticing loot wasn't skewing other data while we experimented with possible solutions.

We're currently keeping a watchful eye on how the changes we've implemented to address split-farming are doing, and whether or not there are additional steps or tweaks we need to make. If we feel the split-farming issue is in a better place and as we get closer to the expansion launch, we can revisit Kadala and re-evaluate her drop rates. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Demon Hunter Fan Art

DeviantArt member ArisT0te has created an awesome female Demon Hunter drawing! Check it out, as well as his other creations in his DA gallery!

Transmog Price Lowered To 50,000 Gold

A change we'll see in a future patch is the lowering of the price for transmogrifying an item - currently it costs 500,000 Gold, but Blizzard decided to make it 10 times cheaper!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

500k gold to transmog an item to look like a leg is too high I think.
I'm already struggling in the gold department to combine gems, enchant legs etc.
Maybe half or less?

We agree that 500k gold to Transmogrify an item to look like a Legendary is a bit steep, so we've decided to reduce that cost. Our current intention is to change that cost to 50,000 gold, and that will be updated at some point in the future. As always, things are subject to change in the beta, but I wanted to share our current intent.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard

A Fix For Crashes On The Way
Hi Everyone,
Good news on this, it is looking like we will be applying a fix for this in an upcoming PTR/Beta patch. I can't make hard and fast promises about when that will be deployed, but it is looking like it is going to happen very soon.
Thanks for your patience and all of your reports about this! (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
-------------
2-Handed Weapons Bug

Massively increase all rolls, including damage. They're a joke now. Should be at least 30% higher than any 1 handed weapon.

There's a bug right now that might have something to do with this issue. Some items are rolling their damage a tier lower than intended, and in some cases these weapons are not rolling a damage affix at all. We'll have this fixed before 2.0.1 ships, though. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
-------------
Torment Difficulty And Legendary Drop Chance

There's also no % legendary drop rate increase listed on any of the torment sliders. Was this removed?

No, it was not removed, because it was never there to begin with. It is true that you do have an increased chance at legendary items in Torment difficulty, but the specific extra chance isn't something that is shown on the UI. For now, this is intended. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)
-------------
Pools Of Reflection UI Change

Thanks for the tip! Did not know that - maybe I missed it in patch docs or something.

The UI update to Pools of Reflection was not mentioned in a patch note, but it was recently implemented in this last beta patch. You can find it by hovering your mouse over your experience bar when you have a Pool of Reflection bonus active. It includes the amount of experience bonus (25%), the remaining bonus pool of experience, and a note indicating that you'll lose this bonus if you die. There's also an orange diamond to give you a quick idea of how much bonus pool you have remaining without hovering your mouse over the experience bar. (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Blizzard Stream Awards Winners

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

The 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards, powered by Twitch have come to a close and we’d like to thank you, the community, for tuning into Twitch and voting for your favorite Blizzard game streamers. Blizzard and Twitch established 13 unique award categories representing streamers from four Blizzard franchises (Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft). Six of these categories were data-driven (example: most number of hours streamed for Blizzard titles in 2013) while the other seven were qualitative categories that were voted on by you, the community (example: favorite community show of 2013). Twitch will distribute a prize pool of approximately $45,000 in prizes that will be distributed evenly to each award category. Here’s a breakdown for how the prizing will be distributed to the winning streamers. 1st place: $2013
2nd place: $400
3rd place: $300
Runners-up: $100

Note: We previously announced that there would be seven data-driven categories of awards. We unfortunately had to drop one of them from the program due to privacy concerns. We have adjusted the award amounts to reflect this. For more info on the Blizzard Stream Awards, please visit our original blog post here. We’ve laid out how each data driven awards category was tabulated, provided a full list of award winners, and a list of the runners-up below and on Blog.Twitch.tv. Data Driven Categories - Twitch's army of data robots and scientists scoured their databases to find the top streamers for the following six categories

• Most Active Viewer – Awarded to the viewer who is following the most Blizzard channels
  • 1st Place: looknohands119 – 595 Blizzard channels followed
  • 2nd Place: zarvene – 562 Blizzard channels followed
  • 3rd Place: kfkfcxy – 505 Blizzard channels followed           
  • Runners-up: bulaire, mtpvipor, ryan780, evilgrades, mabalon, obsena, trip_tv   
• Most Dedicated Viewer – Awarded to the viewer who had the most active subscriptions to Blizzard channels at end of 2013
  • 1st Place: mdstorey
  • 2nd Place: razerdwarf
  • 3rd Place:  umadbroqt
  • Runners-up: pollogalante123, chinglishtv, im_not_dreamin, nzdr, sodapoppin, cloniez, feralkittehkat
• Most Popular Non-English Streamer – Awarded to the broadcaster who had the most ‘minutes watched’ in non-English regions while streaming Blizzard games
  • 1st Place: Sodapoppin – 389,251,500 minutes watched
  • 2nd Place: Reckful – 377,959,500 minutes watched
  • 3rd Place: nl_kripp – 320,320,200 minutes watched
  • Runners-up: TrumpSC, towelliee, Kingkongor, Swifty, Grubby, Dragon, DeMusliM
• Most Engaged Viewers – Awarded to the broadcaster with the highest average minutes watched per unique viewer
  • 1st Place: nl_kripp – 48.89 average minutes watched
  • 2nd Place: Painuser – 30.88 average minutes watched
  • 3rd Place: Reckful – 28.21 average minutes watched
  • Runners-up: Artosis, khaldor, Mori09TV, SelectKR, iNControL, HeRoMaRinE, Trillebartom
• Most Dedicated Streamer – Awarded to the broadcaster with the most minutes streamed in 2013, excluding rebroadcasts, bots, and broadcasters with average viewership under 100
  • 1st Place: Painuser – Streamed 43.5% of the year
  • 2nd Place: Swifty – Streamed 39.1% of the year
  • 3rd Place: protech – Streamed 37.7% of the year
  • Runners-up: whitepearl2622, ddina1230, maximusgrahamicus, pechthefarmer, nomanis, dexter_bl, sintorra
• Highest Stream Viewer Average – Awarded to the broadcaster with the highest average viewer count (over 2000 minutes streamed) while streaming Blizzard games
  • 1st Place: Totalbiscuit
  • 2nd Place: NL_Kripp
  • 3rd Place: Reckful
  • Runners-up: Sodapoppin, TrumpSC, Day9tv, DeMusliM, IdrA, Kungentv, Grubby

Poll Categories – You, the community voted for your favorite Twitch streamers in the following seven categories

• Favorite New Streamer of 2013
  • 1st Place: Jaedong [StarCraft II]
  • 2nd Place: Venruki [World of Warcraft]
  • 3rd Place: Veev [World of Warcraft]
  • Runners-up: Xenocider [StarCraft II], INnoVation [StarCraft II], MoriKopa [Diablo III], Jaetch [Diablo III], Bly [StarCraft II],ByuN [StarCraft II], San [StarCraft II]
• Best Community Channel of 2013
  • 1st Place: Day[9]TV - “Day[9] Daily” [StarCraft II]
  • 2nd Place: ChanmanV – “Climbing the Ladder,” “Wednesday Night Sprites,” & “Value Town” [StarCraft II & Hearthstone]
  • 3rd Place: GameBreakerTV - “Legendary” & “Convert to Raid” [World of Warcraft]
  • Runners-up: Artosis [StarCraft II & Hearthstone], ManaGrind [Hearthstone], ItmeJP [StarCraft II], AmoveTV[Hearthstone], TwizzCast [Diablo III & World of Warcraft], OneMoreGameTV [StarCraft II]
• Most Educational Stream
  • 1st Place: TrumpSC [Hearthstone]
  • 2nd Place: Day9tv [StarCraft II]
  • 3rd Place: Moldran [Diablo III]
  • Runners-up: EGAzael [World of Warcraft], Grubby [StarCraft II], MaSsanSC [Hearthstone], Savjz [Hearthstone], Artosis[StarCraft II], Diablo Fans [Diablo III], iNControL [StarCraft II]
• Favorite StarCraft II Stream
  • 1st Place: Destiny
  • 2nd Place: Grubby
  • 3rd Place: CatZ
  • Runners-up: Jaedong, Dragon, WhiteRa, IdrA, DeMusliM, TLO, iNControL
• Favorite Diablo III Stream
  • 1st Place: Moldran
  • 2nd Place: Kingkongor
  • 3rd Place: DatModz
  • Runners-up: Archon the Wizard, Baudusau420, Moses_2265, Invisuk, Doxsen, Zisss, Cdxliv 
• Favorite Hearthstone Stream
  • 1st Place: NL_Kripp
  • 2nd Place: TrumpSC
  • 3rd Place: Reynad27
  • Runners-up: Itshafu, Reckful, Ellohime, Artosis, Kungentv, MaSsanSC, Savjz
• Favorite World of Warcraft Stream
  • 1st Place: Sodapoppin
  • 2nd Place: Reckful
  • 3rd Place: Swifty
  • Runners-up: Venruki, Veev, Cdewx, Hydramist, LegendaryLea, EGAzael, Ziqoftw

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone that streamed or watched Blizzard games on Twitch in 2013! We look forward to your continued support in 2014. If you'd like to share your unique personality and gameplay experiences, we encourage you to become a Twitch partner. Visit this link for more information.