Diablo® III

We're not going to change/correct the set bonus of Natalya's. It will remain as-is.

It's one of a few cases recently that made us really sit and look at how we were approaching a game system, have some serious discussions about what they mean for the game, and where we want it to go. Sure it's one set and set bonus, but allowing it to continue existing, and even now beginning some work to embrace the concept, probably wouldn't have happened if the unintended change to Natalya's hadn't occurred, and maybe more importantly if you didn't offer your feedback (constructively and in calm and reasonable tones, of course).

We are working on Legendary item changes for a future patch, as I'm sure you know, which could change the set in any variety of ways. I don't know what those changes could be yet, but I do know there's no desire to "fix" the set, even in the updated version. But regardless those changes will only affect items that drop after that patch. They aren't retroactive. Any Natalya's items that drop before that patch (ie the ones dropping now), and the set bonus, will remain unchanged regardless of future Legendary item updates.

Cool story bro!

You guys have zero problem retro nerfing items people current already have and bought. There is zero reason why you couldn't just retro upgrade current legendaries.

Why would they? For pissing more people off?
The IAS changed needed to be retroactive. If you can't understand that IAS was op, it you issue.

@Bashiok - Thank you for the first good news from you guys in a long time. Wish it was more though bud. Also please enlighten us on this if you would...

PLEASE explain how you can nerf our IAS items but you cannot buff our worthless legendary items.

Is it just the time investment not worth it on Blizzards end? I could see it being a huge undertaking that Blizzard might not feel is worth the time invested but, if it is an honest answer would be appreciated.

The time investment is probably the biggest downturn in upgrading everyone's legendary items. Lets see, if I was a Blizz dev, I would probably be making around $65,000 per year. That equates to roughly $31.25 per hour.

For a dev to run a very complicated SQL command, such as:

UPDATE LegendaryStats
SET MinDPS = 950, MaxDPS = 2500
WHERE iLevel = "63"
UPDATE LengedaryStats
SET MinDPS = 850, MaxDPS = 2000
WHERE iLevel = "62"
UPDATE LegendaryStats
SET MinDPS = 750, MaxDPS = 1500
WHERE iLevel = "61"
UPDATE LegendaryStats
SET MinDPS = 650, MaxDPS = 1000
WHERE iLevel = "60"

... etc..

This in itself took me roughly 10 minutes of research to figure out (I'm a web developer, not a database engineer).. so therefore, lets say, it would take a Blizzard dev 30 minutes to figure out.. that translates into $15.63 dollars. With the current economic situation that the US is presently in, I am quite sure that Blizzard would very much like to avoid this huge production cost.

This isn't even accounting for adding new "features" into legendaries, like %chance to cast frozen orb, or something ridiculous like that.

We're not going to change/correct the set bonus of Natalya's. It will remain as-is.

It's one of a few cases recently that made us really sit and look at how we were approaching a game system, have some serious discussions about what they mean for the game, and where we want it to go. Sure it's one set and set bonus, but allowing it to continue existing, and even now beginning some work to embrace the concept, probably wouldn't have happened if the unintended change to Natalya's hadn't occurred, and maybe more importantly if you didn't offer your feedback (constructively and in calm and reasonable tones, of course).

We are working on Legendary item changes for a future patch, as I'm sure you know, which could change the set in any variety of ways. I don't know what those changes could be yet, but I do know there's no desire to "fix" the set, even in the updated version. But regardless those changes will only affect items that drop after that patch. They aren't retroactive. Any Natalya's items that drop before that patch (ie the ones dropping now), and the set bonus, will remain unchanged regardless of future Legendary item updates.

So does this mean they are actually going to try and make the game fun, as opposed to nerfing everything into oblivion for the sake of "balance" ?

Some day I'd love to see this long list of "everything" that has been "nerfed into oblivion".

And no, fixing force armor so that force armor + minimum health isn't a mandatory style of gameplay is not "nerfed into oblivion".

And no fixing rotating monk immunities to that 4 monks can't rotate and be infinitely immune to damage is not "nerfed into oblivion".

And no, bringing over budgeted % attack speed more in line with other damage increasing stats so that it is no longer far and away superior to everything else is not "nerfed into oblivion".

Okay, I'm waiting.

Dont listen to Bashiok. Its like you asking a Car seller, if his cars are good.
Fact is, that with the new patch 1.1, the Legendarys and Set items will have a buff on it with additional effect, that makes the older Set/Legendarys worthless. Thats an indirect nerf. So stay calm and farm enough Money on your work for the next patch.

So does that mean that people who get this set now will be OP compared to people who get it after it's patched? That's a dumb idea.

It's a joke that you are buffing the set for the class that is ALREADY OP as all hell.

And you leave every single other class set the same.

Joke devs for joke game are a JOKE!

If a blue can answer this question then I will be very very impresssed.

What kind of moron designs a game with items called "legendary" then actaully and knowingly tells their fan base that these items while having the lowest % drop rate won't be anywhere near as good as rares and in MOST cases a figgin blue.

That has got to be one of the dumbest things ever.

So, you tell your fan base you are "looking into it" and you're going to "buff" future legendary items' but you won't buff previous legendary items. So now you're making the legendary items we have already found with the .001% drop rate and making them EVER MORE USELESS!

FRIGGIN GENIUS!

And all the while you can nerf every single IAS item on all of your servers and you "accidently" buffed the set for by far the easiest class to play.

Fail fail fail fail!

Yeah they'd plead the 5th for every question if we ever got a face to face Q+A with them.

Why would they? For pissing more people off?
The IAS changed needed to be retroactive. If you can't understand that IAS was op, it you issue.

I smell a fanboi...

It would have made more sense for them to buff the other stats and make them comparable to IAS... then they wouldn't have had a huge group of pissed off people.

LOL @ people who think this is a buff to the DH CLASS. This is an unintended buff to gear only 1% of us can afford. Just a huge carrot to the DH who are still even playing this game, or have no qualms about dropping $500 on the RMAH

I love how people can't see past the end of their own nose.

Oh noes, some other class is getting to stay a little more powerful, I'm so jelly!

Sit and think for a minute. This sets a precedent that this game desperately needs. Every class should feel a little OP compared to the game, that's the heart and soul of hack n' slash ARPG games.

Everyone's time will come as they slowly make the necessary changes to this game to bring it back in line with how it should be.

Just sit down, shut up and hang on.

I think you guys are totally insane. It trivializes the DH's resource. You could at least nerf it to a sane value like 1 per sec. sheesh.

What's next, we need to get legendaries on every character to give us insane resource regen or other insane stuff that trivializes the game? Reminds me of Enigma.

B*tch plz.

If it makes the game closer to hacknslash for DHs then more power to them.

For your information, this genre is about getting those elusive perfect statted items just for fun, it's a luxery. And it's not about farming for 3000 hours just to make it resemble a hacknslash game which it should have been in the first place.

My main is DH and it's the only class I enjoy really. I don't need to trivialize discipline to enjoy it. I don't want to feel forced to dumb down the class with overpowered legendaries/sets to keep up with the economy or have a chance in PvP when that comes along.

I also don't want to have the same exact legendary "best" "ideal" gear that every other DH does. I love how my rares are different from everyone else's. It would be even cooler if they added more interesting item affixes... but... baby steps...

Anyway, making legendaries and sets totally broken is a step backwards towards the days of Enigma D2, which makes the game LESS FUN.

I am all for making these items competitive and viable (found a Windforce and cried at how crappy it was) but they shouldn't totally break the game.

Blizzard, I always believed in you, I always knew you will eventually start to listen to your players. 'Tears coming down my face. Hope this change in attitude goes way beyond legendary items, lift the nerf hammer and embrace the concept you advertised, "There is no such thing as too much power!"

Cool story bro!

You guys have zero problem retro nerfing items people current already have and bought. There is zero reason why you couldn't just retro upgrade current legendaries.

Yeah, they should have left the previous attack speed items alone so that they would be the only valuable items ever to grace the games while new items are relatively worthless in comparison.

They won't retroactively change legendary items because the items themselves are going to undergo a fundamental change. Legendary item XYZ pre 1.1 will only be vaguely similar to Legendary item XYZ post 1.1. When they had unique modifiers to them, they'd have to reroll every existing legendary with the new modifiers, which would put people in the position of having a near perfectly legendary rerolled into a piece of garbage. Yeah that sounds like a good solution. You should work together with the guy several posts up that thinks going through the database and arbitrarily raising stats of legendary items is the best way to make them more appealing.

Why would they? For pissing more people off?
The IAS changed needed to be retroactive. If you can't understand that IAS was op, it you issue.

I smell a fanboi...

It would have made more sense for them to buff the other stats and make them comparable to IAS... then they wouldn't have had a huge group of pissed off people.

Yeah, they should have buffed dozens of other stats to bring them in line with a single stat, and then re balanced the entire game around that. Very smart. There is a reason you aren't a game designer.

Dont listen to Bashiok. Its like you asking a Car seller, if his cars are good.
Fact is, that with the new patch 1.1, the Legendarys and Set items will have a buff on it with additional effect, that makes the older Set/Legendarys worthless. Thats an indirect nerf. So stay calm and farm enough Money on your work for the next patch.

We still have a 1.0.4 before 1.1, and probably a 1.0.5 the way things are going. You're talking months of demon hunters being brokenly OP with this set bonus.

I smell a fanboi...

It would have made more sense for them to buff the other stats and make them comparable to IAS... then they wouldn't have had a huge group of pissed off people.

Yeah, they should have buffed dozens of other stats to bring them in line with a single stat, and then re balanced the entire game around that. Very smart. There is a reason you aren't a game designer.

So nerfing stats and then nerfing the difficulty of the game makes more sense to you? Rofl.

As if it would have been any harder to change the classes a bit to up the damage done by the main stats (which is the only thing that would have needed changing, as crit is just as OPed as IAS used to be).

So does this mean they are actually going to try and make the game fun, as opposed to nerfing everything into oblivion for the sake of "balance" ?

sounds like it to me. but i'm sure someone will come along and say it's all lies.

"it's all lies..."

06/27/2012 01:37 PMPosted by Ryuujin

So does that mean that people who get this set now will be OP compared to people who get it after it's patched? That's a dumb idea.

Don't you remember how patching in D2 worked? They changed the stats on many unique items, for example Arkaine's Valor was nerfed in patch 1.09, but the Arkaine's Valors that had dropped in 1.08 and before all retained the better stats.

Easiest way to identify when people are jaded and just complaining for the sake of complaining, finding whatever they can to whine about, is when half of the posts in a thread say "DEMON HUNTER OP QQ" and the other half way "THIS CLASS IS SO BROKEN NOBODY PLAYS IT ANYWAY".