Pet Toughness Increasing in Diablo III Patch
Plus details on a loot bug in the Uber Diablo fight, and a community roundup
Pets should be roughly as survivable as the player. There’s a lot to this statement so let me clarify a bit:
- Pets should scale with your survivability stats. They currently scale with most of your stats but not all of them. This is being worked on.
- Pets should derive their Toughness from yours, and if you skip out on it, your pets’ survivability should be noticeably lower as a result. On the flip side, they should be noticeably tougher if you’ve increased your own Toughness. You shouldn’t skimp on Toughness just because you have pets.
- We don’t want pets to be invulnerable tanks. In the live environment pets are too squishy, but even after our review is done in a future patch, if your pets are still dying a lot, we want you to be looking to increase your Toughness, which will consequently increase your pets' survivability.
To work towards the first goal, Pets should take reduced damage based on how avoidable the monster attack normally is for a player. This is done instead of giving pets AI to run away from damaging attacks, which would cause them to lose out on DPS time. These monster attacks exist in a spectrum but roughly fall into 3 categories:
- Full damage to pets - Basic melee/weak projectile attacks, not expected to be always avoided by a player.
- Reduced damage to pets - Special attacks such as fireballs, which typically deal more damage than a basic attack, are pretty bright and visible, and can sometimes be avoided by the player. Good example are Perdition’s volley attack or Agnidox’s fireballs.
- Drastically reduced damage to pets - Persistent AoEs for which the player is intended to move out of quickly or highly-telegraphed attacks for which the player is intended to avoid altogether. Examples are Thunderstorm monster affix, Mallet Lord’s arm attack, or Morlu meteors.
We’re not at our goal yet but are actively working towards it. Though the vast majority of monsters abilities in the game already follow these guidelines, we’ve identified a number of monsters abilities (e.g. Mallet Lord’s arm attack and some others mentioned in this thread and elsewhere) which don’t, and we will be addressing them in a future patch.
Does difficulty matter?
I am on a season character so I was doing master level rifts and now on torment 1 rifts.
Thanks.
You'll need to be in Torment difficulty in order to have a chance to find a Greater Rift Trial Key. Each level of difficulty beyond Torment I will give you a greater chance of finding a key, too.
Read on for the first edition of the new The Waypoint community post roundup.
While there's no question that slaying hordes of demons and looting heaps of shiny trinkets from their desecrated corpses is a ton of fun, sharing and talking about these experiences with other players on our forums and elsewhere on the web can be equally as entertaining. Many of you go beyond just sharing experiences, though; you offer advice, provoke thoughtful debate, and sometimes cause us to laugh our Hammer Jammers off.
With so many different places to chat about Diablo online, though, it can be easy to miss some of these great conversations. So, to help you keep your finger on the pulse of the community, we've created The Waypoint!
Rather than try to cover every great topic that comes up in the Diablo community, we'll be highlighting a handful of engaging player discussions each week. Then, we'll open up the floor to you, so that you can share your thoughts in the comments below.
What discussions caught our eye over the past week? Let's find out!
What Legendary Gems Would You Create?
Gordon#1827 and Saidosha#1136 posed an interesting question on our official Diablo III forums: What type of Legendary Gem would you create if you could? We think this is not only a fun, creative exercise, but a great way to get valuable feedback on what kinds of Legendary Gems you’d like to see.
So, if you could create any type of Legendary Gem and add it to the game, what would it be?
A Quick Guide to Organ and Key Farming
If you've ever wanted a handy guide for farming keys and/or organs to craft a Hellfire Ring or Hellfire Amulet, /u/thelehmanlip of Reddit Diablo has you covered. His "Concise Key and Organ Guide" breaks down all the essentials, including where each Keywarden spawns, what keys said Keywardens drop, the realms accessed from each Infernal Machine, and which organ pieces come from which bosses when defeated.
Know of any other great Hellfire crafting guides? Share them in the comments below!
What Does Your Best Hellfire Amulet Look Like?
Speaking of the Hellfire Amulet, have you rolled a great one since patch 2.1.0 launched? That's what Redditor /u/podboi wants to know. Recently, he asked his fellow players to show off their best Hellfire Amulets (and has received some pretty amazing screenshots in response).
But what about you? What does your current best Hellfire Amulet look like?
Got an Idea for a New Community Buff?
Haeos#1932 and WarMonkey#1467 have encouraged players in the official forums to put on their thinking caps and share some ideas for future community buffs. Haeos has done a wonderful job of compiling previous suggestions for buffs people would like to see, while WarMonkey#1467 is provoking new conversation around holiday-themed buffs.
What are your three favorite ideas for new community buffs? Create your own, or show support for existing ideas included in the two threads above.
Explaining How Bane of the Trapped Works
In his helpful video "Bane of the Trapped Explained," YouTuber Meathead Mikhael explores what types of skills will trigger this Legendary Gem's effect, the other Legendary Gems that complement it well, and how it works in action. There have been a lot of questions on the forums about how these powerful new gems work, so this video guide is certainly appreciated.
Have you all seen other great guides on Legendary Gems? Which are the best?
Conclusion: Share Your Best Threads!
We could easily fill up another column with our favorite discussions, but we’d rather hear what your favorites are instead.
Who helped you with a tough gearing question this week? Who posted a constructive thread, or collected a lot of cool info to share with everyone? Send us a link to a thread, article, tweet, or video that caught your attention (along a brief explanation of why you think it should be included in our next column) to tyvalir@blizzard.com!
That wraps up the inaugural Waypoint. We'll see you next week!
Server optimizations are being tested on the Public Test Realm
Official patch notes and server changes for Season 7
An overview of the patch that is arriving this week, and bringing Season 7
A look at the rewards in Season 7, and the journey to achieve them
A weekend Diablo III bonus buff on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox One
Official patch notes and server changes for Season 7, including new Torment difficulties and a nerf to group buffs.
An overview of the bigger changes and additions in patch 2.4.2.
A look at the rewards in Season 7, and the journey to achieve them.
