Diablo 3 hotfixes tweak class skills, fix disconnection bugs

Many of the balance changes that Diablo 3 players have been noticing recently have been confirmed by a new set of patch notes outlining a couple of significant updates Blizzard have made over the course of the past week.

As suspected, the Monk, the Demon Hunter and the Wizard have had their most exploitative abilities squished. A number of other bugs have been fixed too, which means we will sadly no longer be able to dual wield double handed weapons, but on the plus side, trying to remove gems from an unsocketed item won't cause the game to disconnect.

Grab the patch notes below, but be warned, after the line that says "spoilers ahoy" there be spoilers ahoy yaharr.

Monsters

• Mehtan the Necromancer and his skeletons can no longer be used to kill other monsters which have been kited to their location before or after the "Restless Sands" event

General

• Players will now receive an error message when attempting to remove a gem from an item with no sockets (rather than disconnecting)

• Players will now properly have their casting interrupted when attacked while performing resurrect on a fallen group member

• Resolved over 30 game and service crashes affecting players

Classes

• Demon Hunter

  • Active Skills

    • Smoke Screen: Duration reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second (tooltip will still show 2 seconds)

    • Skill Rune - Lingering Fog: Now increases the duration of Smoke Screen to 1.5 seconds (tooltip will still show 3 seconds)

• Monk

  • Active Skills

    • Fists of Thunder

      • Skill Rune - Quickening: Fixed an issue that was causing spirit regeneration to incorrectly trigger off critical hits from other sources, such as Sweeping Wind

    • Serenity

      • Skill Rune - Tranquility: Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second

    • Mantra of Healing

      • Mantra of Healing will now correctly provide only two times the base healing effect for the first 3 seconds after activation, down from four times the base healing effect (tooltip will still show the old value)

      • Skill Rune - Boon of Protection: A maximum absorption amount has been set to 1000 Life. This skill will be redesigned in an upcoming patch.

• Wizard

  • Active Skills

    • Arcane Torrent

      • Skill Rune - Cascade: Fixed an issue that was causing Arcane Torrent to fire 3 new missiles per kill instead of only 1 new missile per kill

      • Number of simultaneously missiles generated from this rune will now cap at 10 missiles

    • Energy Armor

      • Skill Rune - Force Armor: Amount of damage absorbed from a single attack will now cap at 100% of a player's maximum Life

  Items

  • The chest spawn in the Town Cellar in Alcanus has been changed from a 100% chance to spawn a Resplendant chest to a 50% chance to spawn a Normal chest

  • Players can no longer dual-wield two-handed weapons

  • Equipping a shield on a follower as a demon hunter will no longer disconnect you from the game.

  SPOILERS AHOY

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  Encounters

  • Players will no longer remain invulnerable to attacks after defeating Diablo.

  • Players can no longer become stuck during Diablo's Shadow Grab ability if a player blinds Diablo while Shadow Grab is being cast.

  Quests

  Act I

  • Players can now always interact with Karyna during the quest and quest step "Trailing the Coven : Talk to Karyna" when they resume from a save.

  Act II

  • The Enchantress will now always appear during the quest and quest step "Shadows in the Desert : Disrupt the Hidden Conclave."

  Act IV

  • Tyrael will now always be present for the in-game cutscene during the quest and quest step "Prime Evil : Climb to the Pinnacle of Heaven in the Silver Spire."