New Diablo 2 Patch Enters Testing, Brings Respecs

Diablo 2 fans who answered Blizzard's solicitation for feature requests can now see if their ideas made the cut, as the resulting patch 1.13 has entered public testing.

Chief among the changes are long-overdue characters respecs, improvements to windowed mode, new Hell challenges, and tweaks to several much-hated monsters.

The much-requested larger stash was in place at one point during development, but has been removed due to concerns that Battle.net "could potentially not handle the increased stash size gracefully under heavy load." The full test patch notes follow.

A new Mystery has been revealed!

• Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again, that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies within Diablo's Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil to the Throne of Destruction...

Major Bugs

• Fixed an item dupe bug.

• Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.

Minor Bugs

• Uber Mephisto now checks for both Uber Baal and Uber Diablo to be killed before spawning summoned minions (Before he would only check for Uber Baal).

• The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the window loses and then regains focus.

• Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in windowed mode when it lost focus.

• Fixed an issue where the game window wouldn't center properly when it was created.

Specific changes/improvements

• Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.

• Increased the drop rate of high runes.

• Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).

• Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.

• Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.

• Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.

• Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.

• Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.

• Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.

• Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.

• Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.

• Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.

• Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.

• When creating a single player game, pressing the 'Enter' key now automatically creates a Hell difficulty game if possible.

• When creating a game, each difficulty button is now bound to a unique key: Normal 'R', Nightmare 'N', and Hell 'H'.

• The 'Enter Chat' Button in the battle.net waiting room is now bound to the 'Enter' key.

• Added the windows system buttons to the game window (MIN, MAX, CLOSE).

• Added new command line parameter '-nofixaspect' which allows users to not fix the aspect ratio to 4:3 when maximizing windowed mode. This lets the game 'stretch' to fill your monitor.

• Added support for '-sndbkg' command line switch. This enables sound in background.

• Added support for '-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed' command line options.

Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes

Amazon

• Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of Explosion effect by 33% and Immolation effect by 50%.

• Immolation Arrow - Explosion effect damage increased by 20%.

• Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.

Assassin

• Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.

Barbarian

• Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.

• Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.

Paladin

• Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.

Druid

• Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.

• Werebear - Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per point.

• Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.

Necromancer

• Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).

• Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.

• Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.

Sorceress

• Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.

• Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of Firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.

• Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.

• Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.

• Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.

• Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.