Monster Drops, Health, and Experience Reduced on PTR

Another build for Patch 1.0.8 has landed on the Public Test Realm, bringing it to version 1.0.8.16256. At this time, the official public patch notes have not been updated, but the patch notes in the client were updated with changes in this build. We have extracted the additions to the patch notes, and listed them below.

The lines with strikethrough are details that were in previous PTR patch notes but are now being removed, as they are no longer accurate. As previously detailed, the Life regeneration buff for Inspiring Presence from 2% to 4% is being reverted. A number of bug fixes for achievements have also been reverted. This can happen when Blizzard's Quality Assurance team is not able to verify that the bug fixes worked completely; those achievement fixes will probably be pushed off to a later patch.

There are more changes detailed for monster density in this build, in Acts II and IV, which is useful info for players who are testing those changes out on the PTR. The biggest unexpected changes in this build are the wide range of reductions in health, experience, and drops from easy to farm monsters. The developers clearly want players to kill many different monsters in a regular Diablo III game, and not just farm one low health monster over and over, as we have recently seen done. With the increase to monster density throughout the game in patch 1.0.8, there will hopefully be many interesting choices of places to farm, for experience and drops.
The test phase will soon be drawing to a close for Patch 1.0.8, so we don't expect to see many more big builds before the final release to the live servers. We'll keep an eye out for other changes, and let you know if any more show up!