They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. If so, then a brush stroke may portend the beginning of a saga; the merest scratch of a pen on parchment can be the seed of a legend. Hone your craft, for the time has come for you to take up your tools… and bring a hero to life.

If you are up to the challenge, then we invite you to join the Diablo III Portrait of a Champion Art Contest. We ask that you use your skills to immortalize a mighty champion of Sanctuary. Perhaps your original artwork will capture a monk, deep in meditation, calmly preparing to face the slavering minions of hell. You could create a thrilling piece capturing the moment a mighty wizard blasts demonic fiends into dust. Whichever of Diablo III’s mighty heroes you choose to depict, and whatever tale your art tells, let the power of your creativity guide you. We will feature the most impressive pieces on the Diablo III community site, and the very best pieces could win some equally impressive prizes.

There is no time like the present to begin forging an image that is sure to sway our hearts, but remember that any images you submit must wholly be comprised of your own, original imagery, cannot exceed a resolution of 1600 x 1200, and may be no larger in size than 5 MB. We will begin accepting contest entries soon so do not delay, for Sanctuary’s darkest hour approaches.

General

• All characters have been wiped. Please note that this wipe will also affect gold, achievements, items, followers, and artisans.
  
• Intelligence now grants 0.1 per point to resistances, and will no longer award any bonus to healing from health globes
  
• When dual-wielding, certain skills will now always use your main-hand weapon to determine damage
  
• For example, Cyclone Strike will use your main-hand weapon damage even if your off-hand weapon is set to swing next
  
• An option to permanently enable Advanced Tooltips has been added to the Gameplay Options
  
  
• Auction House
  
  
  
  • ​The gold auction house is once again available for testing
    
  • The listing fee for all auctions has been removed
    
  • The transaction fee for auctions in the currency-based auction house has been increased to 1.25 Beta Bucks
    
  • The minimum listing price for an item in the currency-based auction house has been increased to 1.50 Beta Bucks
    
  • Players may now only have 10 active auctions per auction house
    
  • Tooltips have been added which will allow players to compare items on the auction house to the items they're currently wearing
    
  
  
• Battle.net
  
  
  
  • Public chat is now available to test
    
  • Cross-game support has been added! You can now chat with Real ID friends playing the World of Warcraft PTR or StarCraft II PTR, as well as view their in-game status and current broadcasts.
    
  
  
• Skills
  
  
  
  • The levels at which both active and passive skills unlock have been adjusted for all classes
    
  • Skill runes are now available for testing
    
  • The first skill rune will unlock for all characters at level 6, and players can unlock additional runes as they level up
    
  • In total, players will be able to gain access to 5 skill runes for each skill by level 60
    
  • Character skills have been broken down into categories, and each category has been assigned to a specific mouse button or action bar slot in the skill UI
    
  • The following categories will be shared by all classes:
    
    
    
    • Primary Attack
      
      
      
      • "Primary Attack" applies to skills that typically generate resources and can be used frequently
        
      • By default, Primary Attack is assigned to the first mouse button
        
      
      
    • Secondary Attack
      
      
      
      • "Secondary Attack" applies to more powerful skills that are commonly limited by a cooldown or resource cost
        
      • By default, Secondary Attack is assigned to the second mouse button
        
      
      
    • Defensive
      
      
      
      • "Defensive" applies to skills which can be used to escape or control the flow of combat
        
      • By default, Defensive is assigned to the first action bar quick slot
        
      
      
    
    
  • Each class will also have three additional categories which are unique. By default, these categories will be assigned to the second, third, and fourth quick slots in the main action bar.
    
  • Elective Mode: For players who wish to explore character builds which cannot be accomplished with the provided categories, an “Elective Mode” has been provided. When activated, Elective Mode will allow you to place any skill in any skill category slot, as freely as you could before.
    
    
    
    • To enable Elective Mode, simply check the corresponding box located in the Gameplay Options menu.
      
    
    
  • The cooldown on swapping skills has been decreased from 30 seconds to 15 seconds
    
  
  
• Classes
  
  
  
  • Barbarian
    
    
    
    • Active Skills
      
      
      
      • Bash
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 145% to 150%
          
        
        
      • Cleave
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 115% to 120%
          
        
        
      • Frenzy
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 100% to 110%
          
        
        
      • Ground Stomp
        
        
        
        • Base skill no longer deals weapon damage
          
        • Stun duration increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
          
        
        
      • Hammer of the Ancients
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 180% to 200%
          
        
        
      • Leap Attack
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 100% to 125%
          
        
        
      • Threatening Shout
        
        
        
        • Damage reduction decreased from 50% to 25%
          
        
        
      
      
    • Passive Skills
      
      
      
      • Weapons Master
        
        
        
        • Swords/Daggers: Damage bonus increased from 10% to 15%
          
        • Maces/Axes: Chance to critically hit increased from 5% to 10%
          
        • Polearms/Spears: No change
          
        • Mighty Weapons: Fury generated per hit increased from 1 to 3
          
    
    
  • Demon Hunter
    
    
    
    • Active Skills
      
      
      
      • Bola Shot
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage to main target increased from 100% to 130%
          
        • Weapon damage to other targets in range increased from 75% to 110%
          
        
        
      • Caltrops
        
        
        
        • Movement speed reduction decreased from 65% to 60%
          
        
        
      • Chakram
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 135% to 150%
          
        
        
      • Entangling Shot
        
        
        
        • Hatred generation decreased from 4 to 3
          
        
        
      • Evasive Fire
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 115% to 125%
          
        • Pathing has been improved when performing a backflip
          
        
        
      • Hungering Arrow
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 85% to 115%
          
        
        
      • Impale
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 275% to 250%
          
        
        
      • Vault
        
        
        
        • Pathing has been improved
          
      
      
    • Passive Skills
      
      
      
      • Steady Aim
        
        
        
        • Damage bonus when no enemies are within 10 yards increased from 10% to 20%
          
        
        
      • Vengeance
        
        
        
        • Maximum Hatred bonus decreased from 50 to 25
          
        • When healed by a health globe, Hatred gain increased from 10 to 20 and Discipline gain increased from 1 to 2
          
    
    
  • Monk
    
    
    
    • Active Skills
      
      
      
      • Breath of Heaven
        
        
        
        • Spirit cost reduced from 50 to 25
          
        • Heal amount increased
          
        • Now has a 15 second cooldown
          
        
        
      • Dashing Strike
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 160% to 80%
          
        • Pathing has been improved
          
        
        
      • Exploding Palm
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage from bleed effect decreased from 65% to 60%
          
        
        
      • Lashing Tail Kick
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 225% to 200%
          
        
        
      • Mantra of Evasion
        
        
        
        • Chance to dodge bonus decreased from 25% to 15%
          
        • Secondary bonus to dodge attacks, in effect for the first 3 seconds after activation, also decreased from 25% to 15%
          
      
      
    • Passive Skills
      
      
      
      • Guardian's Path
        
        
        
        • When dual-wielding, chance to dodge bonus increased from 10% to 15%
          
        • While using a two-handed weapon, Spirit regeneration bonus increased from 20% to 25%
          
        
        
      • Resolve
        
        
        
        • Enemy damage reduction decreased from 30% to 25%
          
    
    
  • Witch Doctor
    
    
    
    • General
      
      
      
      • Witch Doctor mana has received a tuning pass
        
      
      
    • Active Skills
      
      
      
      • Corpse Spiders
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage per swing decreased from 38% to 25% per spider
          
        
        
      • Firebomb
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 155% to 100%
          
        
        
      • Grasp of the Dead
        
        
        
        • Movement speed reduction increased from 50% to 60%
          
        
        
      • Haunt
        
        
        
        • Duration of Haunt no longer scales per level
          
        • Now deals 350% weapon damage over 15 seconds
          
        
        
      • Hex
        
        
        
        • Damage bonus to hexed enemy decreased from 20% to 12%
          
        
        
      • Plague of Toads
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 150% to 130% per toad
          
        
        
      • Summon Zombie Dogs
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage per hit decreased from 15% to 9% per dog
          
        
        
      
      
    • Passive Skills
      
      
      
      • Spiritual Attunement
        
        
        
        • Mana regeneration decreased from 2% to 1% of maximum Mana per second
          
    
    
  • Wizard
    
    
    
    • General
      
      
      
      • Arcane Power regeneration has been lowered from 12.5 per second to 10 per second
        
      
      
    • Active Skills
      
      
      
      • Arcane Orb
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 225% to 250%
          
        
        
      • Diamond Skin
        
        
        
        • Maximum absorption amount decreased
          
        
        
      • Frost Nova
        
        
        
        • No longer deals weapon damage
          
        
        
      • Ray of Frost
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 155% to 200%
          
        • Movement speed reduction decreased from 40% to 30%
          
        • Attack speed reduction decreased from 30% to 20%
          
        • Duration of slow and attack speed reduction decreased from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
          
        
        
      • Shock Pulse
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage increased from 90% to 105%
          
        
        
      • Wave of Force
        
        
        
        • Weapon damage decreased from 250% to 220%
          
        • Movement speed reduction increased from 50% to 60%
          
        
        
      
      
    • Passive Skills
      
      
      
      • Glass Cannon
        
        
        
        • Damage bonus reduced from 20% to 15%
          
  
  

Crafting

• The cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%
  
• The gold and reagent cost of Blacksmithing recipes has received a tuning pass
  
• The following affixes now have a chance to appear twice when crafting an item:
  
  
  
  • Min damage
    
  • Max damage
    
  • All Elemental damage types
    
  
  

Followers

• Templar
  
  
  
  • Skills
    
    
    
    • Heal
      
      
      
      • Heal amount increased
        
      
      
    • Loyalty
      
      
      
      • Healing per second increased
        
  
  

Items

• General
  
  
  
  • Passive Spirit regeneration granted by the Spirit Regeneration item affix has been increased
    
  • Quivers will now grant +damage
    
  • New item affixes have been added!
    
    
    
    • Chance on hit to:
      
      
      
      • Fear
        
      • Stun
        
      • Freeze
        
      • Immobilize
        
      • Chill
        
      • Blind
        
      • Slow
        
      • Knockback
        
  
  

Vendors

• Vendors will now change their inventories more often throughout the game, and will have access to wider variety of item affixes
  
• The chance for a white item to appear in a vendor's stock has been reduced from 30% to 10%
  
• The vendor value of all items has been reduced
  

Monsters

• The health and damage of all monster in the game have been adjusted
  
• The amount of gold dropped by monsters has been increased
  

Bug Fixes

• For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Beta Bug Report forum.
  
• Achievements should now awarded properly once their objectives are met
  
• Accounts that were locked by error messages (such as ERROR_395002) should now be unlocked
  
• Players should now be able to buy gold using their Beta Bucks
  

Last August we held a Diablo III press tour, and it was with a small group of fansites that I first revealed significant changes were still in store for the rune system. Since then, we've been hard at work on the rune and skill systems, and today we'd like to share details on the changes you'll see in Beta patch 13. We're confident that these changes will make Diablo III a better game, and to help illustrate why, I'll start with a high-level explanation of our goals for these systems as well as the feedback we were responding to in making these changes.

I'll start with the skill system. Our high-level goal with this system has always been to give players a great degree of power to customize their characters. We believe we accomplished that early on by abolishing skill trees and moving toward an open-ended system where skills, rune variants, and passives are chosen at-will by the player in a flexible customization system.

That goal and the system have been great successes, but the amount of customization we have available doesn’t mean anything if it’s not useful in combat situations. Combat depth is another one of our goals; Diablo III is designed to be a modern action game, built on the mantra of “easy to learn, difficult to master.” What that means for the player is picking a set of skills and abilities that work together, and then executing them in ways that lead to success: the wholesale slaughter of the demonic invasion. With that combat-depth goal in mind, we’ve been internally categorizing the skills since the inception of the system. Many of you could probably identify what these categories were if we asked, and some players have even mapped out what they are fairly accurately.

For every class we essentially created three common types of abilities, and then a handful of class-specific ability types. All classes have skills that fit into categories we call Primary Attack, Secondary Attack, and Defensive. Primary Attack skills are frequently used abilities that typically generate resources. Secondary Attacks are more powerful attacks that are limited in use through resource cost or cooldown. Defensive abilities are used to escape or control the flow of combat. Beyond that, classes have unique categories, like armor spells for the wizard or mantras for the monk. We used this methodology to help us design the classes and their skills, but we weren’t exposing this to the player despite the fact that these categories would give the player, like they did our own team, a better understanding of how the classes work.

One of our other goals is to ensure our game controls and interfaces are easy to use so that players spend their time trying to master game mechanics rather than fighting an interface. Giving players complete freedom to choose “anything” with no direction as to how our systems are intended to work was a failure in our design. There was also a detached relationship between the bottom-bar UI and the skill system. We have six skill slots, and six spots to put skills, but the two interfaces didn't really interact, and stocking abilities in your interface felt awkward.

To fix these issues, we focused on two core changes: (1) exposing the skill design intent by categorizing the skills and (2) linking skill selection directly to the bottom-bar UI to make assigning skills a clearer process. When viewing the skill screen, you’ll be presented with your six skill selection slots; each of these correspond directly to your bottom bar, and each will provide a specific list of skills from which to choose. By providing a clear-cut guide on how to best maximize your build potential, we hope to cover that “easy to learn” half of the mantra.

You may already be fuming because you’re a “difficult to master” type of person, but before you run to the forums, we have you covered. In the Gameplay options, we’ve added an ‘Elective Mode’ for the skill system. With this checkbox ticked you’ll be able to place any skill in any skill slot, as freely as you could before. The Elective Mode option is available at any time with no requirements or need to unlock it. We hope the new, more guided interface will give you an in-game heads up as to the intent of each skill -- and maybe even be the way you play through the game in Normal -- but if you eventually have a build that simply can’t be accomplished the way we’ve laid things out, you’re free to pop on Elective Mode and take the skills you want.

While the skill system is largely unchanged save for some UI improvements and the helpful new (but optional) skill categories, we’ve been working to make some rather intense changes to the runestone system. Before we get too far, it’s probably best to clarify our terms: First, they’re now called skill runes, and they’re called skill runes because they’re no longer a physical item, but built directly into the skill system. Let’s back up, though, and go through some of the problems we were encountering and how this final design is intended to resolve those issues.

Our goal with the rune system has always been to provide additional character customization by allowing players to augment or completely alter their skills in new and significant ways. Originally, we tied this in to the itemization system because it felt like a good fit, as Diablo is all about the item drops. But with around 120 base skills, that meant there were around 600 rune variants; on top of that, each variant had five quality levels each, meaning ultimately there would be something like 3,000 different runes in the game… and we knew we were heading toward a problem.

Diablo is certainly about the items, but later in the game, having to juggle all of those various runes was not only un-fun, it was a serious and tedious inventory problem. We went through a number of different iterations, some of which we fully implemented and tested, to try to solve these fundamental issues while still keeping the customization intact. Ultimately we developed, implemented, and have been playing and testing a new system which we’re confident hits all of the desired mechanics and solves all of the related issues – and that’s what I’m going to talk about today and what you’ll see in Beta patch 13.

With the new skill rune system, you’ll be unlocking new skills as you level up just like you always have… but in addition you’ll also be unlocking skill runes. Now, when you open the skill window, you’ll choose which skills you want in which slots, the skill rune variants you’d like, and your passives. All of this is done directly through the UI, and all of the options from the skill, skill rune, and passive systems are unlocked through character leveling progression, leading to a cleaner overall integration of these systems. Just as we set different skills to unlock at specific levels, skill rune choices unlock at different levels as well.

Another thing we strive for in our games is “concentrated coolness,” and while rune quality levels made sense when we were attempting to itemize them throughout the game, they make far less sense as runes are unlocked through the UI. We didn’t want to get back into a situation where you’re clicking a button to pump points into skills. It’s far more concentrated (and cool) when your rune choices have a single and powerful benefit to your skill choice. The new skill rune system does not have ranks, and we’ve instead made each around the equivalent to what the rank 4 or 5 rune was previously. One click, you make your rune choice, and you get an explosive benefit to that skill. That feels a lot cooler.

Runes have been by far the biggest design hurdle we’ve had in the game, and as you know we’ve been continually iterating on them. We fully expect that some of you will be disappointed that runes won’t be part of the itemization system. Internally, it took us a long time to let go of that notion too and stop trying to force them into being items, and instead embrace the intent of the system. Integrating runes with the skill system directly gave us a bunch of great benefits, and even without runes we’re launching with more item types than Diablo II had. We knew we were making the right choice by letting go of runes as items and focusing on the core objective of the system: to customize your skills in awesome ways.

Before I wrap up, I did want to cover that one of the added benefits of the new system is that you’ll be unlocking something every level all the way up to the level cap (60). Now, with each level you’ll unlock at least one new skill or rune, and in most cases you’ll be unlocking three or four. The most immediately exciting part of that system is that skill runes begin unlocking at level 6, which means that players in the beta test will finally be able to play around with some rune variants.

Phew. Well, there you have it -- the new skill and rune systems! We strongly believe that these changes are going to make for a better Diablo III, and we’re looking forward to you trying it out in patch 13, which should be live any minute now (if it isn’t already). As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on your experiences with these changes. To help center the conversation on these changes to a single location, we’re going to lock comments on this blog and encourage you to post in a thread we’re specifically making to discuss this: Skill and Rune Changes Discussion.

Thanks for reading.

Jay Wilson is Game Director for Diablo III and won first place in the team’s chili cook-off competition. Recipe available upon request.

To ensure that all systems and changes included in Beta Patch 13 are working properly, we've decided to take some extra time to continue internal testing. As a result, we will not be releasing Beta Patch 13 today. We will, however, be working through the weekend and look forward to delivering the patch on either Saturday or Sunday.

Thank you for your patience! Should any changes to this schedule occur, we'll be sure to provide an update in this thread.

In the near future, we'll be implementing several changes to the posting limits and fees related to the beta version of the Diablo III auction house. Here’s a quick summary of what’s in store:

• Listing fee is being removed.
• Transaction fee is being increased to 1.25 Beta Bucks.
• Minimum listing price is being raised to 1.50 Beta Bucks.
• You will be limited to 10 active auctions per auction house.

With the removal of the listing fee, players will no longer need to worry about whether they’re going to run out of free listings for the week. In addition, introducing a limit on the number of active auctions means players won’t feel as though they should be trying to sell everything they find, potentially flooding the auction house with unwanted items. Under this new system, players will only pay an auction house fee if and when an item actually sells. This has the main advantage of allowing players to try to sell their items risk-free. In addition, because the transaction fee is already baked into the price when an item is listed (as part of the minimum listing price), it’s no longer possible to be in a situation where you don’t have enough Battle.net Balance to list an item, forcing you to have to charge up your Balance just to attempt a sale. We think this will be a much cleaner process for selling items and will ultimately lead to a better experience when using the currency-based auction house.

This new active-auction limit will also apply to the gold-based auction house. Because gold can be sold on the currency-based auction house, we need to ensure there are limitations on the gold auction house as well; otherwise, a player might be tempted to sell everything for gold and then sell that gold on the currency-based auction house, which isn’t supportive of the kind of thriving item-driven market we’re trying to foster. In addition, for the first time in the beta test, we're planning to have both the gold- and currency-based auction houses active at the same time when these changes go live. Of course, one of our main goals in making these changes to the beta is to test how they’ll work out, and we look forward to hearing your feedback once you have a chance to try them.