New Diablo 3 Bugfix Patch

[iThinkiWin]

@squirt's necklace Is it really a bug though?
Diablo 2; sorcs would stack bmanas for the energy shield build.
Whirlwind assassins poison (DoTs) could penetrate this and drop a player to 1 hp, but then would have to kill the shield afterward.

[MlokCZ]

Playing without THud is far less enjoyable than with it.... but not impossible I'm patient I know it'll come when its ready hopefully the update didn't do too much to make KJ's life more difficult (or annoying than the chorus of folks whining about THud being down blah blah blah...)

I hate playing without TH (I am not playing right now). It is good some resting for my arm from clicking.

I'm patient too. It'll come when its ready. KJ need some time.

[ak47.mobil]

Now i have time for girlfriend. KJ help me, she wants sex!

[Vern1701]

Which is why I tweeted to BlizzCS and Diablo inquiring about a short extension to the season. Not only because of TH, but because of the clan interface issue that also includes the friends list and the inability to form groups. If I get an answer, I'll post it here. I also asked about the possibility of another patch. Apparently, even after the patch, there are still numerous issues. From the Bug Report Forum:

Diablo is experiencing quite a few bugs:

Party Chat : party chat is not working (update, this is working in pubs but not private)
Clan Chat : not working for some still (still not working for everyone)
Groups : Not allowing players to accept invites or send them out. Not allowing 4 users in a game. Receiving errors “This player is a non seasonal character” when they are.
Friends List : Displays player level at 0, displays as non seasonal when they are on seasonal characters. Displays Unknown instead of player class.
Community Chat : Says no one is in (update, this is now working)
Profiles : Not visible (update, working now for some)
Unable to Change Character : When in a party. (working for some)
Invisible Characters : Some characters are not displaying in Party Menu.
Broadcast : Not working

Some of these issues have been fixed, however, there might be a social API for the game throwing a technological temper tantrum and throwing either bad code or a mother board. If that is the case, another patch may be required. Stay tuned and keep this thread going.

[Vern1701]

Is KJ is working on it? I didn't see any statement from him in forums.

I think this is going to take time. Might as well do something else for a while, since I can't really play without THud anymore.

Yes he is working on it, and take a look at my previous post. Keep in mind: KJ has a life outside of this project, so please respect that and don't bug him too much. I am keeping my eyes open and ears tuned and have sent tweets out asking for updates. Any new info I get, I will post, so KJ can concentrate on TH. If he requests another update after the one I just gave him, I will send him a PM. However, the forums work perfectly, so I don't expect him to. Also, it is 3 AM here, so I don't expect an answer to my tweets until after noon.

[Vern1701]

I'm on a roll here, so here's another tidbit: BNet maintenance is scheduled for 8:30-9:30 AM PDT later this morning. It may or may not resolve the social issues related to the game, but since BNet caters to all of Blizzard's games, it is a possibility.

[Befeater]

@squirt's necklace Is it really a bug though?
Diablo 2; sorcs would stack bmanas for the energy shield build.
Whirlwind assassins poison (DoTs) could penetrate this and drop a player to 1 hp, but then would have to kill the shield afterward.

Well, not even a Shield Pylon is protecting Squirt's Necklace Stacks. A Shield Pylon is literally preventing any damage calculation and grants full immunity to anything except for Wormhole affix.

So even if some damage sources would count as "absorb penetrating damage", a shield pylon grants full immunity, therefore preventing players from taking any damage.
=> Squirt's Necklace shouldn't lose stacks atleast in that case.

But all these effects (Frozen affix, Man Carver & Agnidox Fire Rune, Accursed poison clouds, Anarch charge trails, Bogan Trapper traps, [...] ) are first calculated with shield absorb and then dealing damage to health. If I trigger a dozen Bogan Trapper traps, I can see my shield dropping fast by the DoT-damage and after that health points being taken. (Same goes for the other effects, but in thsoe cases it's easiest to see and check)
=> Squirt's Necklace shouldn't be lost on these effects either.

So, yes, I'd say it is a bug. A bug that exists for like all eternity - but this time it affects a "damage bonus" and not just "some unnecessary, rarely used utility item"-LegendaryPower / "only used on certain specs for some classes"-LegendaryPower.

A "damage bonus" of 100% increased damage as own multiplier that slowly has to re-stack whenever stacks are lost. Frozen packs pretty much disable Squirt's Necklace, always hitting and instantly removing the stacks, activating again before reaching 5/5 Squirt-Stacks again.

A "damage bonus" that has use @speedrun and @push.

They turned a bug that merely did affect anyone if even at all into a bug that now affects many people on many builds at everything - from speed running up into competitive rankings.
High density open area maps, perfect enemy composition to quickly fill the progress bar, useful kinds of pylons spawning, useful pylon order. ... "not too many effects that kill my '+100% damage done'-buff uptime"...

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Thank god we did get obvious important things like "Squirt Necklace"-BuffDisplay and all >after< PTR went down. Else we could have told Blizzard already beforehand and not after a patch release (aka "the time of hot burning forges but still less than nothing happening").

Imagine D3 would have any kind of information in its own ingame interface and people could really test stuff themselves without the help of third party tools and/or third party websites. Not even buff-/cooldown-durations being displayed after all these years literally tells us stories about the baseline D3 interface.

Without Turbohud I could pretty much also just toggle off the interface and would actually get more information due to less useless shapes and buttons blocking sight on screen. Worst time to play D3 - the time between new D3 client update and new THUD client update.

[KillerJohn]

well, the main problem is that we (personally, I) don't know if the game is stable now, or I have to expect a new patch which would render all the work tonight and today worthless....

[ak47.mobil]

i think. dont waste your time. we can all wait for server maintenance. maybe its running stable after it. dont do twice/triple stuff

[xblade2k7]

the only way is test for see. Regards

[MlokCZ]

Schedule maintenance:
Breaking News - This week’s maintenance schedule - Blizzard Support
It is only a few hours waiting, it is probably better to wait.
But I don't see in list D3. Is it not likely that will be another patch for D3.

[Wasted74]

@KillerJohn: Last "patch" only restored the regular diabloIII.exe and diabloIIIlauncher.exe. The original patch deleted them. Build is still v2.6.6.62433.

[Vern1701]

Thank god for BNet maintenance in four hours, then. I will let you know, KJ, if they do need another patch. I'm hoping that the maintenance will do the trick, but after last week's cycle... I'll know more by 5 pm PDT today. I do need some sleep, though, but I'll be back later. For the record, the gameplay aspect of the game is stable. However, the entire box (which includes the social aspect) has to be included for a patch to be certified, as KJ knows. We'll revisit this this afternoon PDT.

I will say that WoW does hotfixes in these situations, but being an MMO, that's to be expected. D3 is a different genre, so it has to be approached another way. Possibly some backend work would be done that doesn't require another patch, but that's just me brainstorming. Only the techs working on the issues know the answers, hence my tweets that were sent out earlier.

[iThinkiWin]

@Befeater ah, if its dropping while shield is up then yeah definately bug lol i didnt notice that one.

[Vern1701]

More info:

It is not a Diablo 3 issue. It is an issue with the changes to the Battlenet infrastructure that handles a lot of the social and communications features in many games. Older games that were not made to go with Bnet have the most issues.

This is from the CS MVP on the GD forums. So, the good news is it looks like there will be no need for a new patch. I will keep researching, but the infrastructure, as I stated earlier, is still in a state of instability, hence the maintenance, which should make stabler. More to come...