Blizzard provided Updated Diablo 3 Patch 2.1 Notes for the PTR over the weekend to reflect changes in the newest patch. We covered all the skill changes in a skill comparison datamining post late last week, but the notes codify and centralize a lot of the miscellaneous changes (buffed 2H weapons, salvage all, Ramaladni’s Gift bugs, etc) that have been mentioned in recent blue posts.

Here is the newly-added stuff of note:

General Portals to the Treasure Realm can now only spawn in Adventure Mode at level 70 Healing The amount of Life on Hit granted by items and Paragon points has been further increased Ramaladni’s Gift

Bug Fixes Players will now properly be prompted with a confirmation dialog before using Ramalandi’s Gift Fixed and issue that caused items to re-roll their affix values when Ramaladni’s Gift was used on that item Will now properly be Account Bound Fixed an issue that allowed sockets to be rolled back on to an item via Enchanting after Ramaladni’s Gift was used on that item User Interface Legendary Gem upgrade success chance will now show on the Greater Rift scorecard General Cooldown Reduction now affects the recharge time of skills with charges Items The base damage range of all two-handed melee weapons has been increased by approximately 23-26% depending on the speed of the weapon, with slower weapons receiving a slightly higher increase This change will retroactively apply to existing items This change will apply to all item rarities As a direct result of this change, the Crusader Passive Skill, Heavenly Strength has also been adjusted Items Leoric’s Crown Legendary Power added Increase the effect of any gem socketed into this item by 75-100% The Swami Minimum level increased to 30 Legendary Power added The damage bonus from enemies killed while in Archon form now lasts for 10-15 seconds after Archon expires Achievements: Bug Fixes Champion Subjugators will now properly be counted towards Achievements Fixed an issue preventing some of the criteria for the On the Edge of Reality achievement from being completed in Adventure Mode A Prisoner’s Journal should now properly drop after freeing the prisoner from the A Stranger In Need event Players should now properly receive credit when completing Realm of the Banished in Adventure Mode for the Dungeon Master Achievement Fixed an issue that prevented looted follower tokens from progressing the I Got What You Need achievement The Swamp Hawks needed to complete the Stamp the Champs achievement should now properly spawn CRAFTING Blacksmith The number of Magic materials required to craft Legendary and set Bracers has been reduced from 120 to 72 New buttons have been added to salvage all normal, magic, or rare quality items in your inventory at once These buttons unlock when the Blacksmith reaches maximum level

Do you realize that Life on Hit and Regeneration have been boosted 5x from their initial Paragon 2.0 value? LoH was 16.5 and it’s up to 82.5 per point. Regen was 33 and it’s now 165.1 per point.

Varying Socket Values?

Interesting legendary property on Leoric’s Crown (db), with 75-100% more bonus from socketed gems. First of all, that helm does NOT get a socket as an inherent bonus, which should probably be changed if the legendary affix only works with one. Secondly, that change doesn’t include Legendary Gems which can’t be put into helms. That aside, is doubling your gem bonus (up to +46% Life, 23% faster cooldown, or +82% MF/GF/EXP) going to influence your helm decision? Probably not much at the high end, especially since practically all the Torment-only sets include Legendary Helms and many players are locked into one for their gear/build. But it’s a nice bonus that gives that particular hat some variety and uniqueness from all the rest.

It also brings up a topic I was debating with people some months ago. What if the power of sockets in items in D3 were variable? Say every socketed item had from 75-150% gem bonus, and it worked just like it sounded; gems socketed into that item would grant 75-150% of their listed stat.

My initial idea was to use this to ameliorate the issue of items that *must* have a socket to be viable. So give all weapons a socket, but there’s still RNG in terms of how powerful that socket is. Obviously you’d want a 150% socket rather than a 75% socket, but even if you got a lower roll, at least the weapon wouldn’t be useless, as non-socketed weapons are today. And if 75-150% is too much spread, make it like 80-120%. And of course there’d be some set or other item bonuses that could boost the socket% value for a given slot or for all of your slots, or you could enchant the socket value along with the # of sockets, etc.

I had those conversations long before the Gift of Ramalandi came along as Blizzard’s solution to the “must have a socket or it’s crap” issue, and hadn’t thought of the topic for a while, but it’ll be interesting to see if Leoric’s Crown and that new legendary affix is a sign of things to come. Imagine that +75-100% socket bonus as an item set bonus that applied to every piece of armor you were wearing… would want?