Diablo 3 Season 29 Patch 2.7.6 PTR Starts August 15th!

The highly anticipated Season 29 Patch Notes have dropped and Season 29 Patch 2.7.6 PTR Starts next week! Let's dive into the updates that are coming and learn how you can test out the changes before they go live.

PTR Focus and Details

We’ll be conducting the Patch 2.7.6 PTR starting Tuesday, August 15. During this time there may be periodic maintenances, outages, hotfixes, or minor patches.

• Solo Self Found: This is a new single player mode with unique Leaderboards where you can create a character and play the latest seasonal content. A hardcore version of this mode is available as well. We heavily recommend players experience the PTR in this mode if they are seeking a more challenging experience. Read on for more information about Solo Self Found.
• New Season Theme Testing: We're looking to gather feedback on the Visions of Enmity seasonal theme.
• Class Balance: To ensure that the most significant class changes receive an ample amount of attention, we'd love for you to focus testing and feedback on the balance changes to the Crusader, Demon Hunter, and Witch Doctor class.
• PTR-unique buffs will be active to help you on your journey: increased experience gains, and double Blood Shard drops. You can also buy new gear for testing from the special PTR vendor, Djank Mi'em, who will exchange Blood Shards for class-specific bags full of Legendary Items that we'd love for you to test!

So that we can efficiently review your posts, please provide feedback in the PTR Feedback forum and bug reports in the PTR Bug Report forum.

PTR Testing Tips

As with our previous PTRs, this testing period is short, so it's best to hit the ground running. Whether you’re a PTR veteran or newcomer, we thought we’d pass along a few tips to get you started.

• Because of the limited duration of this PTR, we ask that participants pick a particular portion of this update to focus on testing.
• For example, if you’re primarily a Witch Doctor player, consider what changes impact the Witch Doctor specifically. What you like best, what you think may still need adjustment, and what you’d want to see in the future (even if that may be beyond the scope of this patch) are all good questions to ask yourself before submitting feedback.
• Try to break things! Just tell us when you do so we can make sure that the patch’s launch is as smooth as possible.
• When providing feedback, focus less on a solution and more on your experience. How did the changes make you feel? Did something seem incorrect or insufficient? Suggestions are always welcome but identifying the issues themselves is most important.

Solo Self Found

Demon slayers seeking to up the intensity of their journey through Sanctuary can try out the new Solo Self Found mode. In this mode, you’ll have only yourself to rely on to overcome the hordes from Hell. That’s right, it’s a single player experience. If you’d like to up the ante even more, a Hardcore version of this mode is available.

We decided to bring Solo Self Found to Diablo III after years of players requesting an officially supported single player mode. Without the experience bonus from being in a Party, or other players to protect your back as you carve through demonic legions, this mode will temper you. To celebrate the accomplishments of those brave enough to roll a character in this mode, we have also created specific Leaderboards for Solo Self Found. These Leaderboards function like those for other modes.

To create a character in Solo Self Found, select the Solo Hero option in the character creation screen. You’ll still be able to play the Campaign and Adventure Mode just as you would in other modes, but only the Private Game option will be available to use. Challenge Rifts can be completed with a Party while the mode is seasonal. Solo Self Found is a solitary journey, so you will be unable to start this mode while in a Party or access Multiplayer aspects of Diablo III, such as trading. Rebirthing is available for Solo Self Found.

The Season 29 Visions of Enmity theme and the other components of Patch 2.7.6 were designed with Solo Self Found in mind. We urge you to test it out and give us feedback about your experience.

Season 29: Visions of Enmity

The nefarious machinations of the Burning Hells have permeated every corner of Sanctuary, warping reality in the process. This disturbance has given way to Visions of Enmity, pocket dimensions that are accessed by stepping through Diabolical Fissures.

Nephalem Level 1 or higher have a chance at encountering a Diabolical Fissure by slaying demons in the open world. Should your smiting of hellspawn trigger a Fissure, press onward and into a Vision of Enmity—what horrors await on the other side are unknown, but these instances are rich in rewards. The Visions are quite unstable and have the potential to produce additional Fissures after enemies are dispatched inside—keep an eye out for these opportunities to maximize your chance of earning useful gear.

New Monster Affixes

Watch your health, Nephalem! New powers originating from the Burning Hells have been bestowed upon all enemies inside the Visions, making them more lethal than before.

• Enervating: Creates an area of effect around the monster that reduces the player’s Movement Speed by 65% and Cooldown Reduction by 50% if the player is in the vicinity of the monster.
• Necrotic: The player's healing is reduced by 65%. Monsters have a damage-over-time effect that deals 180% of the player’s max health over 30 seconds. This effect is removed if the player is healed above 95%.
• Resource Leech: Hitting a player removes 65% of their maximum resource.

Paragon Ceiling

We are introducing changes to Paragon Points to work in tandem with Solo Self Found and the Season 29 theme. You can only assign a total of 800 Paragon Points to your character. Previously, you were only able to assign a total of 50 Paragon Points to each attribute within the Core, Defense, Offense, and Utility categories, but now you can assign up to 200 in each attribute. Each category can only have 200 Paragon Points placed into them.

Developer's Note: We understand that Paragon was king in terms of character power. With the change this Season, we wanted to shift that power from Main Stat grinding to gameplay knowledge and gear hunting. We chose 800 as our initial starting point and would appreciate your feedback on this cap. There are a few changes within the Paragon system to keep in mind:

• Movement Speed: We changed Movement Speed to 0.125% per point because the old value would have provided players with 100% Movement Speed, which was too much. Players now have the option to place points into this stat, allowing them to surpass 25% Movement Speed from item bonuses.
• Area Damage: Area Damage should perform the same, if not a bit better, and with substantial improvements to performance.

Community-Led Changes

With each Patch and Season, the community has communicated quality-of-life improvements they would like to see added to Diablo III. We always take the time to review the feedback we receive, evaluate it, and implement changes that align with our design principles for the game. Below is a series of highly requested quality-of-life updates that are included in the Patch 2.7.6 PTR. Thank you for your continued feedback over the years!

Greater Rift Monsters

• Greater Rift Monster Set 8: Removed Toxic Lurkers and added Vile Swarms.
• Greater Rift Monster Set 10: Removed Dark Berserkers and added Savage Beasts.

Monk

• Added a buff icon when proccing the legendary item Flying Dragon.
• Moving your mouse underneath the character while casting Tempest Rush Flurry stacks should no longer reset randomly.

Necromancer

• Haunted Visions used to remove Skeletal Mages from the Simulacrums only if the player had Grim Scythe on their action bar, now it will remove Skeletal Mages regardless.
• Requiem Cereplate was not calculating the correct amount of Essence and was adding way too much overflow excess Essence per tick. This has been fixed.

Miscellaneous

• Removed Mastermind from the Champion portion of the seasonal journey. This means you no longer must master a Set Dungeon. Instead, it has been replaced with Overcoming the Trials, which asks you to complete an Echoing Nightmare.
• Due to the unique animation of how Hamelin dies, there were many issues with how it rewards kill credit. Hamelin now rewards kill credit to the closest player on death.
• Corrupted Angels and all variations would sometimes do an attack that does double damage without any indication that it was a unique move. This has been changed to deal the same damage as normal attacks.
• Added Greater Rift map checkpoints to Battlefields and Boneyards.
• Corvus, Ice Caves, and Spider Caves maps can no longer spawn in Greater Rifts.
• Orek's Dream versions of Desolate Sands and Shrouded Moors have had their monster densities increased.

Class Balance Changes

The Patch 2.7.6 Season 29 PTR introduces various balance changes for the Crusader, Demon Hunter, and Witch Doctor classes. We can’t wait to see how certain builds change for each Class because of these adjustments. For reference, the text in red font denotes the old effect description, while green font denotes the new effect description.

Crusader

• Akkhan's Leniency:
  • Each enemy hit by your Blessed Shield increases the damage of your Blessed Shield by 35-40% for 3 seconds.
  • Each enemy hit by your Blessed Shield increases the damage of your Blessed Shield by 35-40% for 6 seconds. Stacks up to 100 times (No more individual stacks).
• Vigilante Belt:
  • No previous bonus.
  • While riding your war horse, Fist of the Heavens deals increased damage equal to your movement speed, and is automatically called down on a random nearby enemy at an interval based on your attack speed if it is on your action bar.

Demon Hunter

• Gears of Dreadlands:
  • Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum duration of 20 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.
  • Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum duration of 20 seconds. This duration begins counting down after a delay of 5 seconds after each application. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.

Witch Doctor

• Cluckeye:
  • 25-50% chance to cluck when attacking.
  • Angry Chicken turns all your pets into exploding chickens. Chickens deal 150-200% increased damage, and Angry Chicken deals 50% more damage per exploded chicken.
• Manajuma's Way:
  • Angry Chicken explosion damage is increased by 2000% and slain enemies trigger an additional explosion.
  • Angry Chicken lasts 15 seconds and movement speed as a chicken is increased by an additional 100%.
  • While you are an angry chicken, you spawn a chicken every second that seeks enemies and deals 25% of your Angry Chicken explosion damage.
  • Angry Chicken explosion damage is increased by 2000% and slain enemies trigger an additional explosion.
  • Angry Chicken lasts 15 seconds and movement speed as a chicken is increased by an additional 100% while gaining 75% damage reduction and for 5 seconds after.
  • While you are an angry chicken, you spawn a chicken every half second that seeks enemies and deals 100% of your Angry Chicken explosion damage.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where interacting with Mail at the end of a Season had the potential to cause a crash.
• Fixed a game crash that occurred when Demon Hunters utilized specific Item and Skill combinations.
• Fixed an issue where the Witch Doctor’s Angry Chicken skill was not dealing as much damage as indicated in the description.
• Fixed an issue where the number of Wizard Mirror Images were barely visible on the game icon.
• Fixed an issue with some icons in the Altar of Rites having hard edges.

How to Participate in the PTR

To participate in the public test, you must have a Diablo III game license attached to a Battle.net account in good standing (i.e. one that hasn't been suspended or banned). In addition, you will also need to download and install the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app if you have not already done so.

Step 1: Restart the Battle.net desktop app.

Step 2: Navigate to the Diablo III tab on the left-hand menu.

Step 3: On the Diablo III screen, there is a drop-down menu right above the "Play" button (note that this may say "Install" if you do not have Diablo III currently installed). Select "PTR: Diablo III" from this drop-down menu before proceeding.

Step 4: Click Install to begin the installation process.

Your PTR account will be created automatically if you do not already have one. The PTR is available in all supported languages, and accounts from all regions are eligible to participate. For additional assistance with installing and launching the PTR, click here.

PTR Character Copy

The option to copy your existing Diablo III characters from your live account to the PTR will be available and can be done directly through the PTR client. However, only one region per account can be copied at a time. So, if you choose to copy characters from your account in a different region, any previously copied PTR characters will be lost.

Step 1: Log into the live game and then log out.

Step 2: Log into PTR client and create a level 1 character. After you're done, return to the main character screen.

Step 3: Click on the "PTR Copy" button located in the upper right-hand corner. (The PTR Copy button will not appear in-game until you have created a new level 1 character.)

Step 4: Select your region.

Step 5: Click "Copy." This will copy all characters on your account from the selected region.

Step 6: You will be disconnected from the PTR client.

Step 7: Log back in. Your copied characters will be available for play.

Please note that you can only copy characters from one gameplay region at a time. If you choose to copy characters from a different region, any previously copied PTR characters will be lost. In addition, you can only copy characters over to your PTR account once every 24 hours. Attempting to copy characters before this cooldown is up will result in an error.

If you haven't already, head on over to our Discord and select the D3 role in #Roles to stay up to date with our content development.

Written by: Facefoot