First Look at Patch 2.1.0

[420]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14244559/first-look-patch-210-6-17-2014

They are adding ladder seasons (Now just called "Seasons") and Greater Nephalem Rifts. The Seasons will have unique legendary items that will become available to non-season players after the season ends. Greater Nephalem Rifts will drop legendary gems that can only be socketed in amulets and rings. These legendary gems will be infinitely upgradable by completing additional Greater Rifts.

Huge change to Dexterity! Dex will now add to armor instead of dodge, which basically makes the monk the same as a barb and crusader regarding defense. (Not sure why they didn't just fix dodge.)

Health globes will give less life but life on hit and life regeneration item mods will be greatly buffed. Not sure if the change to item mods will be retroactive.

-JJ

[420]

Here is a link to the 2.1.0 patch notes currently live on the PTR: Patch 2.1.0 PTR Patch Notes

Lot's of Legendary and Set items are getting new legendary mods and set item bonus mods on them, respectively. (Not retroactive.)

Some highlights people should be aware of:

General

An additional Stash Tab is now available for all players with Reaper of Souls

Players will now be disconnected from Diablo III upon being inactive for 30 minutes while outside of a game

Healing Changes

The amount of Life restored by Health Globes from Rare monsters has been reduced from 30% to 15%

The amount of Life restored by Health Globes from Champion and Minion monsters has been reduced from 20% to 15%

The amount of Life Regeneration and Life On Hit granted by items has been increased

These changes apply to all items from level 1 to 70

These changes are retroactive and will apply to existing gear

Class Skills

Demon Hunter

Dexterity no longer grants Dodge chance

Dexterity now grants 1 Armor per point

Monk

Dexterity no longer grants Dodge chance

Dexterity now grants 1 Armor per point

Monk

Passive Skills

One With Everything Has been removed

New passive added: "Harmony"

30% of your single elemental resistances from items instead increases your resistance to all elements

Monk

Seize the Initiative Has been removed

Will be replaced by another passive skill in the future

Rift Changes

Nephalem Rifts

The cost to open a Nephalem Rift has been reduced from 5 Rift Fragments (total) to 1 Rift Fragment (per player)

Each player must pay the 1 Rift Fragment cost in order to enter a Nephalem Rift

You can no longer click the Rift Obelisk to open a new rift while one is already open

Conduit Pylon duration reduced from 30 to 15 seconds only while in a Greater Rift

Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that allowed the matchmaking system to place players in games with open Rifts where the Rift Guardian has already been killed

Crafting

Blacksmith
 
The number of Magic materials required to craft Legendary and set Bracers has been reduced from 120 to 72

Mystic

When Transmogrifying an item with existing visual effects into a Legendary item, the original item's visual effects will no longer be displayed in addition to the Legendary item's visual effects

Torment-only Set items can now be restored to their original appearance after being transmogrified

Events

Infernal Machine

A new reward has been added: The Hellfire Amulet

New Legendary amulet

Will randomly roll a passive appropriate to your class

Recipe is available for purchase from Squirt in Act II for 5 million gold

Requires the same materials to craft as the Hellfire Ring plus 10 additional Forgotten Souls

-420

[420]

I've been up on the Public Test Realm trying out some of the major changes coming in patch 2.1.

Demon Hunter

Defensively he gets a big boost to his armor and his resists remain unchanged. The loss of dodge doesn't seem to have any major impact since his main attack is Strafe which keeps him constantly moving.

Two major changes to skills allows me to replace two of my passive skills for more offensive ones which actually worked out really well.

Preparation (Punishment) no longer costs Discipline and now just has a cool down. Since that was the only skill I had that required Discipline, I no longer need Night Stalker to build Discipline up so I replaced it with Blood Vengeance which increases max Hatred and Health Globes restore resources (just like his Reaper's Wraps!).

Perfectionist reduces the cost of skills that cost Discipline but I kept it because it also increases armor and resists by 10%.

They also changed Awareness to be more like the Wizards passive Near Death Experience (instead of increasing armor it restores you to life if you die). So I changed that to Sharpshooter because you can never have too many crits.

Monk

In patch 2.1 the skill One With Everything has been changed to Harmony which basically changes the mechanic of how specific resist item mods (ie "+100 Poison Resistance") affect to monks resist all. Basically, instead of taking the highest single resist and applying it to all resists, it applies 30% of any specific resist mod and applies it to all.

So, if you have three items, one with +100 poison resist, one with +100 cold, and one with +100 fire, a total of 90 (30+30+30) will be added to all resists.

Here is a comparison of my poison resist monk's defensive skills before and after patch 2.1:

Before patch 2.1

Dodge: 52.6%

Armor: 7,619 (68.52%)

Resist All: 1,308 (78.89%)

After patch 2.1

Dodge: 29.4% (from Mantra of Evasion)

Armor: 12,898 (78.66%)

Resist All Except Poison: 647 (64.89%)
Poison Resist: 1,308 (78.89%)

So, basically, it reduces my dodge by 23.2% which makes Mantra of Evasion (Backlash) about half as effective. It raises my armor by 10.14% but reduces all my resists (except poison) by 14%. Overall these changes reduce my monk's defenses. Thanks Blizzard!

-420

[420]

The newest PTR 2.1 patch notes are up.

One thing really caught my eye so I decided to do a comparison.

Crusader

Passive Skills

Heavenly Strength

Now reduces your damage dealt by 20% while wielding a two-handed weapon

This is in response to an increase in damage to all two-handed melee weapons and the goal is for the damage of Crusaders using Heavenly Strength to stay the same or increase slightly

Before Patch 2.1

2-Handed Weapon Damage: 2,624.9
Sheet DPS: 415,083

After Patch 2.1

2-Handed Weapon Damage: 3,250.5
Sheet DPS: 408,513

Why they want to drop my Crusader's damage by 6,570 points is beyond me. At least the increase in 2-handed weapon damage is retroactive.

-420