Blizzard has put a lot of effort and a host of changes in their highly anticipated 1.0.8 patch for Diablo 3 and being released yesterday I dove in and tested things to see how well Blizzard did on their modifications. The most notable changes that I will touch upon are mob density, identify all, and multiplayer xp boosts.
Probably the most significant change in the Diablo 3 1.0.8 patch is the new mob density in mp1 and above difficulty on inferno. Everyone was complaining for a long time about how the only area that has a dense location of mobs to farm is a specific route in Act 3. After farming this route over and over it become very monotonous and annoying, and many others agreed. Blizzard has gone ahead and changed MP1+ for inferno with new mob densities so now Acts 1,2, and 4 are playable again because we can get comparable xp from these acts just like Act 3. It's wonderful to now be able to experience the whole game again and not just a very specific route in Act 3 anymore
Having played last night since the patch went live I can say that inferno is wonderful again because all 4 acts have great locations of dense mobs. Act 1 and 2 were notable in their changes, almost to the point where I was jumping out of my seat when I saw 50+ enemies on the screen charging me. This is awesome, and coupled with the fact that now quests offer a small amount of xp it's worth it to just run through entire acts now and not just specific routes. I'm sure as time progresses we will see optimal routes come by again, but Act 3 isn't the only location now for farming xp, loot, and paragon levels.
The other popular change that was in huge demand was the desire for an identify all feature. People were constantly getting rares and filling up their inventory quickly from their runs. The problem is that because their bags filled up fast they had to go back and identify each piece of gear individually which was tedious and took time. Blizzard has changed the game now so that there is the book of Cain, where you can right click the book and it will automatically identify all the pieces of loot you have in your inventory. This is wonderful because now we can just click one button, sell (or disenchant), and be back on the killing fields destroying more demons.
I love this change and this and mob density was the main things I was looking forward too for 1.0.8. This is fantastic because having to individually click on each piece of loot took time and was super annoying, especially when I had a full inventory and my friends didn't so they were off slaughtering more enemies and I was clicking items. I'm glad that we have this new feature so we can quickly identify all in 1.0.8 and then sell and be back on the battlefield.
Multiplayer games now have been changed so that players get additional experience, gold find, and magic find depending on how many players enter the game. The change is an additional 10% on all three stats, up to a max of 30% so this means that playing with others is now attractive again. Prior to this there was no bonus to playing with others because mobs were tougher and usually your party members were lazy or afk'd to leech experience while you did all the hard work. Why play with them then? Just play by yourself where you have easier enemies to kill and still reap the same rewards. Now Blizzard has given us an incentive to play multiplayer again and the changes don't stop there. Gold and magic find caps can exceed the maximum of 300%, and the greatest part is that experience bonuses stack multiplicatively instead of additively. This means that we are going to be seeing additional experience gains that we wouldn't have originally.
1.0.8 had a lot of other changes, but these three were the most highly anticipated changes that everyone wanted. Another part that I liked is that all skills that offered life regeneration have been doubled, which is wonderful because most of these skills were lackluster in our current standing of the game since people have huge health pools and getting something like 300 life per second was pathetic and worthless. Being a witch doctor, I'm loving how blood ritual is now 2% of max life per second instead of 1%, so this means that my big health pool is seeing double the results in regeneration. All skills have followed suit so it may be good to try and use these again.
Another change that I loved was the change to the Archon ability for wizards. Since my brother plays a wizard of course he was psyched to ditch the CM build for something else. Archon now works off assists and not just kills, which is HUGE because not all the time would archon wizards get kills with other players present. Now when we play together he's got tons of time added to his archon duration and can basically stay in archon form for the entire act instead of just a small section which is amazing. He's blasting away at enemies from a distance, and I'm up in the fray blasting tons of mobs (thanks to the new density) with zombie bears. That goes without mention, but the fact that there are tons of more enemies now means that in addition to assists counting for the archon timer, there are tons more enemies to add in as well.
1.0.8 is proving to be wonderful. There was a critical problem in the auction house with idiots duping gold which would have tanked the economy, so Blizzard wasn't able to see this release totally successful, but overall I'm extremely happy with the changes and plan on playing Diablo 3 a lot more now than I did before. I couldn't bear to farm Act 3 again so that's why my game play time had gone down, but the Diablo 3 1.0.8 patch has renewed my interest in the game and I'm seeing more legendaries drop now which is great.
