Blizzard Entertaiment’s “Diablo 3” is doing whatever it is needed to provide an excellent gameplay experience for fans all over the planet. While the company had already released last patch (patch 1.0.2c) a few days ago, now an entirely new patch – patch 1.0.3 – has arrived to provide some more help.

Yesterday we discussed about the prospects and the productivity of the patch 1.0.2c and all the various hotfixes released by the developers, and today we will take a look at the patch 1.0.3 and what more it aims to provide.

So what’s new in patch 1.0.3?

First note that the “Diablo 3” patch 1.0.3 is now available in the Americas. However, it is important to remember that you will not be prompted to download patch 1.0.3 until the patch is live in your home region.

If you are logging in from a European or Asian client, you will need to wait for this patch to release in that region before it can be installed. Moreover, if your home region is the Americas, you will be unable to log into Europe or Asia using Global Play after patch 1.0.3 is live until those regions have also patched.

There are a total of nine topics that will be discussed below – General, Battle.net, Classes, Items, Crafting, Followers, Bosses, Monsters and Bug Fixes.

I. General:

To prevent monsters from being inadvertently kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Hollow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the citizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that prowl beyond its walls.

The rewards provided for replaying quests have been reduced.

The real-money auction house is now available for Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian currencies.

II. Battle.net:

General –

Friends will now be sorted alphabetically by name within the Friends List, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag.

The Quick Join menu will now also sort alphabetically by name, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag.

Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out.

For reporting another player using the Report, the Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session.

Bug Fixes –

Using the /who command in a heavily populated chat channel should no longer cause the client to crash.

The "Invite to Party" button will no longer become grayed-out if a player:

1. Declines a party invite.
2. Requests a party invite and then declines it.
3. Accepts a party invite, but then immediately leaves the party.

The character screen will now always display the correct act and quest information.

If Real ID has been disabled for a Battle.net account, attempting to add a Real ID friend in “Diablo 3” will now prompt the player with the following error message: "Battle.net is unable to add friends because you have Real ID disabled."

III. Classes:

There are five classes – Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor and Wizard.

1. Barbarian –

Will have Active Skills

A. Ignore Pain –

Skill Rune – Contempt for Weakness

The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life.

B. Overpower –

Skill Rune – Crushing Advance

The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life.

The tooltip has been updated to represent that both melee and ranged damage are reflected.

C. Weapon Throw –

Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be slowed: "Hurl a throwing weapon at any enemy for 100 percent weapon damage and Slow the movement of the enemy by 60 percent for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

Passive Skills

D. Relentless –

Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75 percent, down from 100 percent (the 50 percent damage reduction remains unchanged)

2. Demon Hunter –

Will have Active Skills

A. Cluster Arrow –

Skill Rune - Dazzling Arrow

Tooltip now displays the accurate type of weapon damage dealt by Dazzling Arrow: "Enemies hit by grenades have a 55 percent chance to be stunned for two seconds and changes the damage to Physical." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

B. Grenades –

Skill Rune - Stun Grenades

Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Hurl grenades that have a 25 percent chance to stun enemies for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

Bug Fixes

C. Caltrops –

Skill Rune – Jagged Spikes

Effect will now only pile up to 10 times on a single target.

D. Elemental Arrow –

Skill Rune – Nether Tentacles

Tentacles will now only hit each target once.

3. Monk –

Monks can now use two-handed axes, two-handed maces, and two-handed swords.

Will have Active Skills

A. Serenity –

Skill Rune – Instant Karma

The quantity of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life.

B. Seven-Sided Strike –

Skill Rune - Sustained Attack

Tooltip has been updated for simplicity: "Reduces the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike to 23 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

C. Mantra of Retribution –

Damage will now cap based on the maximum Life of the target.

Bug Fixes

D. Near Death Experience –

Fatal damage absorbed by Serenity will no longer generate Near Death Experience.

4. Witch Doctor –

Will have Active Skills

A. Summon Zombie Dogs –

Skill Rune – Leeching Beasts

Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Your Zombie Dogs heal 50 percent of the damage they deal as Life divided evenly between themselves and you." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

5. Wizard –

Will have Active Skills

A. Diamond Skin –

Skill Rune – Mirror Skin

The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the amount of damage absorbed by Diamond Skin.
B. Magic Weapon –

When activated, a buff icon will appear that displays the amount of time remaining

C. Meteor –

Skill Rune - Star Pact

Now deals damage as Arcane instead of Fire.

Passive Skills

D. Paralysis –

Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Lightning damage dealt to enemies has up to a 8percent chance to Stun the target for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)

IV. Items:

+ Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50 percent.

The change does not apply to quivers.

High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty.

The new approximate drop rates are as follows:

A. Hell - Act III and Act IV

iLvl 61: 9 percent
iLvl 62: 1.9 percent
iLvl 63: 0 percent

B. Inferno - Act I

iLvl 61: 17.7 percent
iLvl 62: 7.9 percent
iLvl 63: 2.0 percent

C. Inferno - Act II

iLvl 61: 18.6 percent
iLvl 62: 12.4 percent
iLvl 63: 4.1 percent

D. Inferno - Act III and Act IV

iLvl 61: 24.1 percent
iLvl 62: 16.1 percent
iLvl 63: 8.0 percent

Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63.

Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses.

The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color).

The Staff of Herding can no longer be retrieved or dropped.

Crafted items that are dropped on the ground due to a player’s inventory being full can no longer be seen or picked up by other players.

Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain.

Weapon racks will no longer drop weapons 100 percent of the time.

Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed.

Weapons and Armors –

"Balanced" superior items (i.e. Balanced Short Sword) will now grant a percent attack speed increase that only affects the weapon itself, rather than a flat increase to attacks per second that affected both equipped weapons when dual-wielding.

Crowd Control Reduction from items and skills will now reduce the percentage value of Slow, Chill, and Attack Speed debuffs rather than reducing how long the debuff lasts.

For example: previously, if you were debuffed by a 60% slow that lasted for 2 seconds while wearing gear that provides 20% Crowd Control Reduction, your movement speed would be reduced by 60%, but only for 1.6 seconds. Now, the same amount of Crowd Control Reduction will reduce the Slow effect to 48%, but the effect will remain for the full 2 second duration.

Manticore now has one additional bonus affix.

User Interface –

Minimum damage and Maximum damage values will now display separately in an item's tooltip (i.e. "+2-4 Damage" will now display as "+2 Minimum Damage” and “+2 Maximum Damage").

Tooltips for items on the ground will now show comparison stats.

Resist values will now be taken into effect when calculating the Protection comparison stat (the Protection value is an average protection estimate of all your resists).

When comparing a two-handed weapon against two currently-equipped one-handed weapons, the game will now simulate the removal of both one-handed weapons (instead of simply removing the main-hand weapon, which resulted in an inaccurate comparison).

When selling items to a vendor, the most recently sold items will now always display at the bottom of the Buyback tab.

Bug Fixes –

Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip.

Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix.

Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed.

Note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in a future patch.

Players wearing +Life on Kill items should no longer receive a benefit from this affix when "killing" friendly monsters (e.g. when a witch doctor re-summons a Spider Queen while another Spider Queen is still active).

Fixed a bug with linking items with socketed gems in chat.

Fixed a bug where vendors would occasionally not have any items for sale.

Fixed a bug where selling more than 12 items to a vendor and then buying back 1 of those items could cause multiple items to disappear from the Buyback tab.

Fixed a bug where swapping a 1-slot item (i.e. a ring) with 2-slot item (i.e. a weapon) in the second or third tab of a player’s stash would sometimes cause the 2-slot item to be filtered incorrectly to the first tab.

Fixed a bug that was causing Collector's Edition dyes to sell for the same price regardless of stack size.

V. Crafting:

The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50 percent to 75 percent.

A. Blacksmith –

The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50 percent

The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced

Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5

Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5

The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced

Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft

The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced

Weapon crafting costs have been reduced

The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced

B. Jeweler –

The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced

Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3

The gold cost to merge each rank of gems is as follows:

Rank 2 - Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)

Rank 3 - Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)

Rank 4 - Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)

Rank 5 - Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)

Rank 6 - Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)

Rank 7 - Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)

Rank 8 - Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)

VI. Followers:

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where the maximum Life of your followers was being displayed as different values in different parts of the game UI.

Enchantress –

Skills

Mass Control

Radius reduced from 15 yards to 8 yards.

If Enchantress also has Reflect Missiles trained, Mass Control will no longer accidentally hex the player when both skills are activated.

Skill will now correctly target enemies in all circumstances.

(To find more about the addition to Bosses, Monsters and other Bug Fixes, see here)