Diablo 3’s 2.6.1 patch is working its magic in the PTR at the moment, and Blizzard have released the patch notes, revealing a slew of balance changes, buffs, and class ability redesigns.
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Included in the redesign is the Crusader rune, Limitless, which now increases the damage of Blessed Hammer to 640% weapon damage as Holy and increases its area of effect by 20 yards. Meanwhile, the Barbarian Bloodlust effect now deals damage equal to 20% of your recent Critical Hits to enemies within 20 yards every one second.
The Necromancer has been tweaked the most, which isn’t too surprising given that it’s the newest class. Of course, to see the effects of these changes, you’ll need to buy the class. The Command Skeletons skill, for instance, has seen some dramatic changes. Commanding skeletal warriors will now break crowd control effects on them, and they’ll no longer die after taking too many hits.
Here’s what Blizzard say about this change: “When we were first designing Command Skeletons, we wanted to capture the feeling of being an undead commander by having skeletons regularly spawn around the Necromancer and charge into battle during combat. It created a cool visual, but as the class evolved through Set bonuses and Legendary powers, it became clear that this visual began to hinder gameplay for some builds. Skeletal Warriors now have the same defenses as all other pets in the game.”
Other altered skills include Devour, Simulacrum, Skeletal Mage, Bone Armor, Army of Dead, along with the passive skill, Fueled By Death. Elsewhere, Blizzard’s been fiddling with items, gear sets, and Adventure Mode. Plenty of bugs seem to have been squashed as well.
The patch is live in the PTR right now.