There’s a reason the devs are calling this Diablo 3 version 2, and it’s because the game has changed greatly. Major additions and system overhauls abound, with a complete reworking of the end game experience 
Paragon 2.0 system, items via Loot 2.0, the difficulty settings and game progression, major changes to the overall combat engine and gameplay, adjustments to almost every skill and rune effect, big changes to the economy and crafting, new UI features, and more.
Thus follows a (fairly) brief tutorial covering the major new changes, with many links to related commentary that goes into much more depth about the new stuff. The Wiki links go to comprehensive articles on the issues and while not every page in the DiabloWiki.net has been updated to v2/RoS into yet, we’re working on it.
Difficulty
Difficulty has been completely overhauled. The grinding through Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno has been removed, replaced by a dynamic scaling system. All monsters in the game now adjust on the fly to match your character’s level. It is therefore impossible to choose to play content much higher or lower than your character’s level, unless you join a game created by another character, since the monsters will scale to his character’s level.
Difficulty can still be customized by “challenge levels” — Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, Torment 1-6 — which roughly approximate the previous Monster Power 1-10 settings. Higher challenge levels boost the gold and experience, and certain high quality items can only be dropped on Torment or higher.
Click through for similar coverage of other key changes in Version 2, including Paragon 2.0, removed D3 features, RoS-only features, skill changes, combat system modifications, advice on farming for items and/or exp, monster density changes, Cursed Chests, Bosses, and much more.
Removed Diablo 3 Features
A few features have been removed or made minimally-functional, generally due to larger game changes.
Reaper of Souls Features Not in D3v2.0.1
Just to clarify and establish this up front, a lot of the features you’ve heard so much about during the Beta/PTR are only found in Reaper of Souls and are not present in Diablo 3, even in Version 2.0.1. A quick list:
Crusader class.Adventure Mode and Bounties.Nephalem RiftsMystic and Enchanting.Gambling with Blood Shards.Marquise level.User Interface
Paragon Points and End Game Experience
The Paragon System is entirely reworked. No more do individual characters have Paragon levels. Now all exp earned by max level characters counts for an account-wide paragon level (Hardcore and Softcore are separate). All your current Paragon exp is combined to determine your account’s Paragon level, and the majority of players have between 50-150 points when entering the new system, with only very busy players over P200. (For example, in Softcore I had P81, P60, P18, P13, and P5 = P127 in the Beta. Checking today on live, I had only P105, so they tweaked the curve down a bit during testing.)
Paragon exp earned by already deceased HC chars counts towards your HC Paragon total when the system goes live.
Mainstat (varies by class), Vitality, Movement Speed, and +Max Resource.Increased Attack Speed, Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Reduce Cooldown time.Regen, Resource Cost Reduction.Area Damage, Resource cost reduction, Life per Hit, Gold Find.The amount of gain varies between the fields and all stats other than Mainstat/vit max out with 50 points. (Points earned above P800 can only be spent in the Core Tab.) Paragon points provide small bonuses per point, but they add up substantially and are excellent to fill gaps in your gear, or to customize your characters in various ways. They are very impactful when applied to a new, low level character, making rerolling (such as in Hardcore) much more enjoyable.
Character Skills
There are massive changes to skills, with every skill and virtually every rune effect tweaked in some fashion. The developers made a concerted effort to provide many more viable builds and greatly increased the damage of many underpowered skills. See also the comments below on the changes to the combat system, which opens up more variety in skill use, since multiple defensive and crowd control skills are no longer required for most builds.
The full compiled list of skill changes has not yet been released, but you can see the huge amount of them that were altered during the PTR testing in past Patch Notes. Feb 13, Feb 7, Jan 17, etc.
Combat Basics
One of the biggest changes in Version 2 and Reaper of Souls is a general revision to how combat works. The clickclickclick mechanic remains unchanged, but there’s been a general smoothing and extending of combat. Most of the spiky damage has been removed, and decently-geared characters are now much less likely to get one-shotted or to feel trapped and helpless in certain combat situations.
The game isn’t exactly “easier” since the most overpowered skills and Life Steal have been nerfed, but it feels more tactical and strategic in battle, with a wider variety of options and play styles opened up. Players can still go all or mostly DPS and crush, but to survive on higher difficulty levels requires a lot of life regen, healing from various sources, damage mitigation, crowd control, and other tactics. Without Life Steal + big damage = instant full health restore, players have to engage in hit and run and move to avoid danger.
The combat now feels more like an active interaction where avoiding trouble is necessary, rather than just gearing up and tanking through it (or not) as in the old days. This has opened up many more play styles and made the game a lot more fun for glass cannons, in the process greatly improving the Demon Hunter and enabling a huge variety of Wizard builds.
Loot 2.0
This could be a full article by itself, but the key changes in bullet form:
The Crafting system has been extensively overhauled.
Monster Density and Farming
The monster density has been tweaked throughout the game with fewer empty stretches and more interesting “clumping.” Compared to v1.08, most levels have more monsters, though the few densest areas from the previous patch are now less crowded. This means that there are no clear best farming areas. Most players on the PTR tended to farm areas they liked the best, with no real concensus as to what was the most profitable. (Players in Reaper of Souls ran bounties or cleared Nephalem Rifts, neither of which is available in D3v2.)
See the many detailed discussions of farming choices and values in this new forum thread from PTR testers. Popular areas are the Leoric’s dungeon levels of Act One, the Dhalgur Oasis in Act 2, the Keep levels in Act 3, and all of Act 4 (the last act has much improved density and is now a viable farming option).
Legendary items drop much more frequently, and they seem fairly-evenly distributed between objects, trash mobs, and bosses. There’s no reason to skip bosses or trash or concentrate on anything in particular in order to find the most legendaries.
Side events and Cursed Chests provide substantial experience and gold rewards, and are almost always worth doing if you encounter them during your adventures.
Cursed Chests
These glowing red chests trigger monster events that are worth substantial experience if successfully completed. There are several types of these events (which sometimes function as bounties in Reaper of Souls, but not in D3v2.)
Cursed Chests provide exp and gold rewards, with bigger bonuses and usually a second chest appearing if you complete the entire challenge. The drops from the chests are generally crappy though, and most players on the PTR felt that they needed a buff, much like the Treasure Goblins got.
Bosses and Elites
Bosses may now spawn with minions not of their same monster type. This can be easier or harder, depending on the luck of the RNG. Minions in general are much buffed in hit points and make fights with Yellow Elites much more difficult and lasting. (Beware Arcane Enchanted, Molten, Plagued, and other effects that Minions can cast.)
Champion packs often spawn with up to 5 enemies now, adding to their challenge.
There are five new Boss Modifiers described in the Patch Notes. They add flavor, but none are especially dangerous compared to current enemies. Watch out for Wormhole since it moves you from one location to another which is confusing at first. Poison Enchanted looks terrifying with the green covering, but the damage isn’t that bad. Frozen Pulse is sneaky dangerous, as the puck will home under your feet and start pulsing directly on you.
Many of the existing Affixes seem less dangerous now. Desecrator takes longer to scale up damage, Arcane Enchanted gives more indication where the initial needle is going to point, Plagued and Molten are less damaging, etc. [/wiki]Reflects Damage[/wiki] received the biggest nerf, since it no longer deals back a percent of damage taken, which means high DPS characters don’t have to worry about killing themselves on the Thorns. Any reasonable amount of regen or LpH will offset it completely.
The most dangerous updated Modifier is Fire Chains, which deals considerably higher damage than anything else, save perhaps standing on a pair of Arcane needles. Beware fast enemies with it, especially Teleporter.
Horde can be troublesome simply because there can be such a huge number of minions spawned by it. Ten or twelve at once was not uncommon during the RoS beta, and with Minions greatly increased in hit points, they could take a while to kill.
More Changes?
I’m sure I forgot to mention some things, so if there’s a topic not addressed here or you want more clarification on something, hit it in comments. We’d like this to be a useful reference for players for some time early in the life of v2.0.1, so we’ll update/fix it with better info as available.
Update: And still on the theme of welcoming everyone to hell the official IncGamers clan and community is open now. DFollow that link for details.
Related to this article
Well yeah I got one – I don’t see the auction house anywhere post-patch. I realize they are getting rid of it, but I thought that wasn’t to occur until March 18th. Did I not get the memo so to speak.
Yeah, was noticing this myself as well. I knew I didn’t see it on the PTR and was assuming this patch would come out when the AH went down, and now I’m confused. What happened to everything that was pending, etc?
There is a gavel or hammer type icon near the helmet on the bottom right that is for the auction. My guess is, they remove it when it goes off line or by June as it mentions in the AH now.
Thanks for pointing that out. When I logged on just now, the icon seemed to be added. I am pretty sure it was not there immediately after the patch went live, but I am glad it is back at least for now.
That icon crashes my Mac client. Guess that’s one way to discourage the AH.
Flux, your write ups are thorough, timely, and full of useful information. The amount of work you put into this site never ceases to amaze me. Great write up and thank you for the info, I didn’t realize D3 Classic was getting all these changes. I am actually going to log in and play prior to ROS.
I’ve been out for a while, and this new update looks fantastic. How did the PVP come out in the 1.0 update?
Not sure if sarcasm…
Not sure either, but just to answer the question… the devs keep saying they want to do a great PvP system for Diablo 3, they just haven’t had time to work on it yet or figured out how to make it. You can hear the game director make noises to that effect mostly recently in a Korean interview from a few days ago.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/video-interview-josh-mosqueira-and-dave-adam
Any news on the PS3 release for 2.0.1? I never liked valor, good riddance. Larger mobs can only be good as well. But when will it come to the PS3? That’s all that really matters to me.
its good 2 see somebody that plays it on the ps3 , hi buddy
It seems the new BoA legendaries can still be posted on the AH.
Defense tab:
there is +%Armor not Resource Cost Reduction.
Flux, could you explain how the infernal machine and hell ring work with the new patch. How to get keys for the machine and same with parts for the ring. The only thing I really know is that you need to be on torment difficulty to get the parts but does your chance increase to 100% on torment 6?
“All your current Paragon exp is combined to determine your account’s Paragon level, and the majority of players have between 50-150 points when entering the new system(For example, in Softcore I had P81, P60, P18, P13, and P5 = P127 in the new system.)
Each character on your account, of any level, has access to the full total of Paragon points. You don’t have to share them in any way .”
I haven’t played for 13 months so still a bit unsure with this .
You said all paragon levels get lumped together and get x number of points to spend . So you got 127 , is that 127 between all your characters , is there a cap on what you can allocate . Could you go on and put all 127 points on 1 character and screw over all your other characters ?
Cheers
127 per character, not just for one of them. The cap is 50 points per stat, except for the 4 attributes, which don’t have a cap.
Ahh thanks , cleared that up nicely .
Good patch so far. In <2h on Trment 2 I found 1 legendary, my first ever legendary plan, a legendary material and 2 or 3 upgrades for my barb and DH.
Thanks for this writeup. I was burned out on D3 about 3 weeks after release, but was curious to try again. I had no idea they changed so many things already.
This is going to sound weird, but I think the biggest most notable change I noticed right away when first playing 2.0.1 is that the game runs way better.
Am I the only one? I used to run at 720p all on low and now I can get 60 fps maxing things out at 1080p.
I heard that in global chat, so there are others, you’re not alone 🙂
About the same for me, which is a bad thing since it means I still get this weird stuttering lag and I can’t figure out what’s causing it (possibly SSD issue). The game runs at max FPS otherwise.
Can anyone explain to me how the infernal machine works with the new difficulty settings? Like do you need to play torment to get the keys?
“White and blue items salvage into 1-3 mats.”
Nope! Level 60 whites tend to salvage into a lot more than that, around 8x
Ya, I was noticing about 10 each for white items. The day before the patch hit, I farmed up a ton of white items (since they dropped like candy), then salvaged them all right when the patch hit. Gave me a nice boost of Common Scraps.
Just an amusing piece of information: it is nearly impossible for a legendary weapon to have a DPS less than 1000. I got an incredibly bad Empyrean Spear that had its min and max damage modifier at only about 10 more than the absolute minimum, and its DPS was still 1006. Thus, a legendary weapon can only roll with less than 1000 DPS if you get the absolute lowest possible roll on damage. Amusingly, if anyone actually got one, it would probably be worth keeping just for the rarity. After all, the chance of getting the absolute lowest possible roll must be pretty close to the chance of getting the absolute highest roll.
Food for thought.
Just one thing. “Affixes provide +10-15% to individual skills and +10-20% to specific elemental damage types.”
This is seriously screwed up. The narrower a bonus is the larger it should be. Bonuses on single elements should be larger than generic damage mods and bonuses for a specific skill should be higher still.
It’s actually 8-15% for skill bonuses and 10-15% for elemental bonuses, Legendaries not included.
The reason this is not a problem is that you will never have to choose between the two stats. Rares can only have one in any given slots and Legendaries that may carry both will always have one as a fixed bonus.
Also, elemental bonuses aren’t necessarily more generic. For some skills only one or two runes may have the element you have the bonus for.
Great overview, Flux. But I’m surprised you say, The combat now feels more like an active interaction where avoiding trouble is necessary, rather than just gearing up and tanking through it (or not) as in the old days. This has opened up many more play styles and made the game a lot more fun for glass cannons, in the process greatly improving the Demon Hunter and enabling a huge variety of Wizard builds.
With a level 60 Demon Hunter (Paragon 15), I was able to take down Diablo just by sitting in one place and blasting him. Didn’t need to avoid any of his attacks at all.
I also found combat to be *less* tactical. I could ignore nearly all special attacks from Elites for most of each combat. But boosting the difficulty as high as Master just made every combat take much longer. So I wasn’t dodging around at all: just sat in one place and kept the right button down with Rapid Fire. Very, very dull.
A more thorough assessment of my thoughts at: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11884218517#1
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For regular rolls, elemental damage types can only roll from +10-15%. A few legendary items have inherent bonuses to elemental damage, such as lightning on Odyn Son, and those roll from +15-20%. Thus, it actually isn’t screwed up: both affixes give you +10-15% normally, and legendaries have higher possible rolls because they’re legendaries. The few legendaries that specifically modify individual skills (as opposed to having them as random mods) are all guaranteed to have large boosts, such as the Three Hundredth Spear.
“Thus, it actually isn’t screwed up: both affixes give you +10-15% normally”
I’d still say that’s screwed up – a bonus to one skill should be far higher than a bonus to multiple ones. I wouldn’t mind seeing those per skill item bonuses doubled or more. .
Hey, the finally fixed the comma issue in the AH ! Too bad it is going away soon…
Thank you for making this thread, it is quite useful! ☆
To “bump” DragonTwins’ question…are we able to make new Hellfire ring in 2.0? If so, how?
My friends and I hunted Key Wardens last night and the KW in act 4 dropped a Key of Terror. He tried adding to his stack of Terror keys from before the patch and they combined which led us to believe we can’t make the new Hellfire rings yet. Does anyone know?
You can make a new hellfire ring – with 300+ prim stat, but no new ubers or new ROS ring, with the diffrent proc lava.
There’s the level 60 version and the level 70 version. Obviously, you cannot access level 70 (or 61-69) content yet.
What I wanna know is when the hell are they fixing the bug where crafted amulets require a forgotten soul instead of a brimstone?
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That doesn’t matter. You could easily make say, a cold Wizard (the whole reason for the element shuffling was so characters had a wider variety of elemental attack options). If you do that element skills boost everything (or at least more than one skill) whereas a single skill is always just one skill.
Yes, if you create the perfect situation for elemental bonuses they are the best. Similarly, if you use the skill you have bonuses for then those bonuses are better.
My point is, skill bonuses limit you to skills, leaving open all rune options for them. Elemental bonuses limit you to elements, limiting you to a comparatively larger amount skills, but quite possible less runes per skill. These are very different limitations in practice and I definitely wouldn’t call either more generic. It all depends on what you want to accomplish with your build.
Another thing I forgot to add before is that on Rares elemental bonuses may spawn in slots: amulets and bracers. On the other hand skill bonuses spawn in 6 slots: shoulder, helm, gloves, chest armor, belt, boots. There are 3 skill groups, each of which spawns in two of those slots I mentioned. So actually, you can get twice the bonus for 3 skills if you choose to boost two element and the same amount of bonus if you choose to boost only one.
I started playing again with the new patch for the first time in…over a year maybe? I love the changes, and it feels a lot more like what I was hoping for with D3. Here’s hoping RoS continues to deliver 🙂
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I haven’t checked but I’d be quite surprised if everybody didn’t have at least 3 of each element now. Regardless, I think bumping up the max on the single-skill bonus to the 25-30% range would make things more interesting. But I guess that’s just one small thing on the list of item mods that could still use some good lovin’.
“I think bumping up the max on the single-skill bonus to the 25-30% range would make things more interesting”
Skill bonuses are already borderline the best offensive stats you can have, their only downside being that you limit your effective skill choices and that it’s hard to get exactly which one you want (made easier by enchanting in the expansion). Upping the bonus to 25-30% would instantly render most other offensive stats insignificant in comparison. It’s not a coincidence that a unique property of some Legendaries is only that they carry 30% damage boosts to one skill.
You can craft Rares for others, but not Legendaries.
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Are you sure they aren’t subject to the 2 hour trade if in game thing?
Yes, I just tried it with a few friends. Crafted a random Legendary, dropped it on the ground, but my friends couldn’t pick it up. Also, their accounts wasn’t listed in the item’s tooltip.