Patch notes for D2R 2.7 (Summary)

They finally released patch notes for game version 2.7 today. Original source here.
Relevant new/actually useful information summarised below:

When does 2.7 release?

Blizzard wrote:

On May 2nd at 10:00 a.m. PDT, a variety of feature adjustments, quality-of-life updates, and bug fixes will go live with Patch 2.7.

Ladder Season 4 release timetable:

Ladder season 4 start times for each region:
Or to convert automatically to your local time, Ladder S4 will begin 2023-05-05T00:00:00   This timestamp has been automatically converted to your local date/time for convenience. The format is DD/MMM/YYYY, HH:MM am/pm. This is based off your browser time.

Items transferring from Ladder to Non-Ladder characters:

Blizzard wrote:

Once Ladder Season 3 ends, all Ladder characters will be transferred to their respective non-ladder group. All items in that character group's shared stash go into a new Withdraw Only set of Shared Stash tabs, denoted by a check marked Past box. Any items from Ladder Season 2 stored in the Withdraw Only tabs will be lost at this time. You will have all of Ladder Season 4 to withdraw any items you would like to keep from Season 3. When Ladder Season 4 ends, this withdraw only set of stash tabs will be overridden with any items in the Ladder Season 4 Shared Stash. Be sure to get any items out before then or they will be forever lost!

New features in 2.7

Blizzard wrote:

• Players will now have 4 additional Character Slots available across all Online Modes.
• The first time a Ladder character from a previous season is used in a non-Ladder game, the ability to Reset Stat and Skill Points at
  Akara will be reset. Characters from previous Ladder seasons who have already been used in non-Ladder games are ineligible.

  Developer’s Note: We want to encourage players to experiment with their builds. If you have already burned through your

  Akara respecs while on Ladder, then you can do additional respecs for more experimentation after the character becomes a Non-Ladder character.

• All Chat Lobbies have been outfitted with an automated system which will remove malicious messages from those conversations.

QoL updates and bug fixes

Blizzard wrote:

Gameplay:

• The Next Hit Delay system now only applies to missiles created by casting the same skill.
• Each Assassin Martial Arts
  Charge-up skill trigger is treated as a different cast of a skill for Next Hit Delay purposes.

  Developer’s Note: We have revised Next Hit Delay to become an easier concept to grasp while still maintaining its original design goals. This change will alleviate some headaches in multiplayer and smooth the edges of certain character builds.

• Knockback has been removed from the Bul Kathos’ Sacred
  Charge 2-Handed Sword.

  Developer’s Note: Bul Kathos is a powerful set, but the Knockback incurred from Sacred

  Charge made using it feel clunky for Melee characters. Considering the rarity of the set, we opted to increase the viability of the weapon and the weapon set as a whole.

• Druids are now able to shapeshift directly between their
  Werewolf and
  Werebear forms.
  Developer’s Note: Shapeshifter Druids using the Metamorphosis Rune Word are encouraged to swap between their
  Werebear and

  Werewolf forms to get the most out of the bonuses. In practice, this is a little clunky because you must shapeshift to

  Werebear, hit a monster, shapeshift back into Human, wait a second, Shapeshift to

  Werewolf, then hit a monster (or wolf then bear, depending on your preference). We're taking out the middleman (literally) to make swapping between forms feel cleaner.

• The Assassin's trap skills now benefit from +% To Elemental Skill Damage modifiers.

  Developer’s Note: We have identified an issue with +% to Lightning skill damage not applying to lightning sentries on Nintendo Switch offline games. We plan to amend this issue in a future patch and apologize for any inconvenience.

• Fixed an issue where
  Mephisto would drop from lower-level treasure classes when Terrorized.
• Fixed an issue where an Assassin dying with Martial Arts charges active could cause a crash in Offline play.
• Fixed the issue where the Assassin's traps weren't benefiting from resistance reduction in Offline play.

General

• Fixed a translation issue for the Reached max character limit text in Polish.
• Fixed an issue where progressing between towns and connected zones from Acts II, III, and V would cause an abrupt lighting change when terrorized.
• Fixed an issue where the icon to denote a monster is Terrorized wasn't properly displaying in certain languages.
• Fixed an issue where the Amazon’s audio cue for dodging an attack would play when non-Amazon characters used the
  Evade skill granted by the Hustle Rune Word.
• Amended various stability issues encountered during Online play.

Ladder Play

• Fixed an issue where messaging for the next Ladder Season was inaccurate during the pause between seasons.
• Fixed an issue where characters that were recently converted from Ladder to Non-Ladder would not display as such and failed to join games.
• Fixed an issue where Rune Words exclusive to an upcoming Ladder Season could be created in the current season.
• Fixed an issue where converted Ladder characters would be incorrectly displayed with the Ladder flag.

PC Specific

• Fixed an issue where controller input would stop registering if the user swapped to Legacy graphics while the animation for selecting a character in the character creation screen was playing.
• Players will now be notified of when they’re running the game with old, extracted data.

Console Specific

• Fixed an issue where a player’s displayed location on the Friends List wouldn’t properly update on Xbox consoles.
• Fixed an issue where players on Nintendo Switch would not appear in the Recently Played With tab.
• Fixed an issue where the localized text for Personalized Items on console displayed all gendered pronouns at once in Polish and Spanish.

Modding

• Increased the total limit of state entries from 255 to 511.
• Added DataVersionBuild.txt. It is recommended that mod authors include this file in their mods to reduce unexpected errors between game versions.
• New columns have been added. Developers of existing Offline Single Player mods can remake their changes with new data or they can add new columns manually before merging:
• TreasureClassEx.txt, cubemain.txt, UniqueItems.txt: "ladder" -> "firstLadderSeason", "lastLadderSeason"
• Runes.txt: "server" -> "firstLadderSeason", "lastLadderSeason"

Thoughts guys?

Underwhelming.

pyropy wrote: 1 year ago

Underwhelming.

Quoted for truth. :/

Teebling wrote: 1 year ago

Or to convert automatically to your local time, Ladder S4 will begin 05. Mai 2023, 2:00 AM

You set this one day to early.

atari wrote: 1 year ago

You set this one day to early.

Ty fixed.

For something that announces nothing, it's not THAT bad.

Lots of bug fixes for the better.

Still almost nothing in terms of gameplay except NHD (quite a good thing overall), druid shapeshift and Bul Kathos, nor QoL (4 slots in better than nothing, not sure if the state entries fixes the issues of poofing items ?)

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

For something that announces nothing, it's not THAT bad.

Lots of bug fixes for the better.

Still almost nothing in terms of gameplay except NHD (quite a good thing overall), druid shapeshift and Bul Kathos, nor QoL (4 slots in better than nothing, not sure if the state entries fixes the issues of poofing items ?)

Oh yeah, almost forgot about the NHD impact on

Fissure and

Volcano, that may make the fire druid not that obnoxious and slow anymore.

Was building a mosaicsin in S3 - just for GPU benchmark purposes of course .

It was already kicking on a budget. Fully geared, it felt like breaking the game. Now it needs a new tier class, S++ or something...

Wouldnt expect too much while they're full swing into d4.

I'm fixated on why they chose the bul-kathos set. Seems like they just picked one at random--I can think of a lot of bad "endgame" sets.

Optimistically, this might signal that they plan to tweak more of these items in the future. What if set items could be ethereal? That would at least be interesting.

Nothing I saw specifically noting 2.6 runewords - like Mosiac - going to be available in NL play. I assume that's the plan, but I'd be nice to see confirmation.

Tey_Rossa wrote: 1 year ago

Nothing I saw specifically noting 2.6 runewords - like Mosiac - going to be available in NL play. I assume that's the plan, but I'd be nice to see confirmation.

you can't build them in NL, but u can still use them.

so with the coming Season 4 and the

Conversion from S3 L to NL Chars they might become available in trade.

Tey_Rossa wrote: 1 year ago

Nothing I saw specifically noting 2.6 runewords - like Mosiac - going to be available in NL play. I assume that's the plan, but I'd be nice to see confirmation.

Just make a Cure or Ground or some such cheap pos to confirm after the season ends.

Theoretically, since they did now set the precedent for ladder-only rolling into non-ladder post-season, one may be able to assume the same is true here and you can make them post-season.
But that'd assume they're sticking to their new approach and being consistent which isn't necessarily a valid assumption about Blizzard by any means.

Them not mentioning it and then still rolling over though, that wouldn't be surprising. That'd just be shit communication which is exactly what you can rely on from Blizz.

Last time L runewords stayed 2 seasons L only before going NL.

I'd therefore assume that if they're not explicitly allowed NL that they are not.

it did surprise me that they added four more char slots and my trapsin just got even stronger with the damage to traps.
would have fancied an option or just another color for gems.

no surprise about no new rune words. prolly everyone there is working on d4 atm.

To be honest, i think there are enough runewords. Starter, mid-range and GG.

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Last time L runewords stayed 2 seasons L only before going NL.

I'd therefore assume that if they're not explicitly allowed NL that they are not.

Last time, L runewords were implied to become NL post-season until Blizz backpedaled on that and didn't move them down after S1. This resulted in a massive outcry and tons of bitching all over the place until they finally caved and moved them down next time around (S2). Considering the chain of events there, the more likely assumption would be "they just move down end-of-season from now on" as opposed to "they always stay L-only for 2 seasons".

Either way, shit communication + utter lack of consistency across the board = anyone's guess.

pyropy wrote: 1 year ago

Underwhelming.

My thoughts exactly. My video just went live - I gave a very matter of fact assessment without the fluff and filler. Many are overblowing the NHD changes as "Massive" adjustments.

Th3ory wrote: 1 year ago

pyropy wrote: 1 year ago

Underwhelming.

My thoughts exactly. My video just went live - I gave a very matter of fact assessment without the fluff and filler. Many are overblowing the NHD changes as "Massive" adjustments.

Th3ory's 2.7 summary video can be found below btw guys, 6 minutes of condensed insights/commentary definitely worth a watch if you're catching up on the patch notes:

Th3ory wrote: 1 year ago

pyropy wrote: 1 year ago

Underwhelming.

My thoughts exactly. My video just went live - I gave a very matter of fact assessment without the fluff and filler. Many are overblowing the NHD changes as "Massive" adjustments.

The impact of the change actually is quite noticeable (based on the pug runs I did since). Even when you're just running group stuff and not on one of the like 2 chars directly benefiting from it by themselves.

Aaaanyways...did you or one of your techie buddies look at what the NHD change really does across the board?

Based on the wording in the notes..

Blizzard wrote:

The Next Hit Delay system now only applies to missiles created by casting the same skill.

.. there is some room for interpretation:

- If player A and player B both cast

Nova within <4 frames of one another, player A will block player B because

Nova =

Nova = same skill but if player A cast

Nova and player B cast

Frost Nova, both would hit as

Nova !=

Frost Nova = not same skill
- If player A and player B both cast

Nova within <4 frames of one another, both will hit as player A cast != player B cast = not counted as the same skill despite being different players using what is ultimately the same skill (i.e. it actually looks at "same skill by same player", not "same skill").
- If player A casts

Tornado and casts another

Tornado within the NHD, both will hit as they are different casts of the same skill (i.e. it actually looks at "same cast of the same skill by the same player", not just "same skill" or "same skill by same player").

And so on and so forth.. a few possible interpretations of that from skill over skill by lvl to player, cast or even missile within cast and then some, inherently then ranging from "NHD becomes rather lenient and hardly noticeable" to "NHD still has noticeable impact in a number of scenarios".

If you consider the follow-up clarification for sin charges specifically talking about "different cast of a skill", I dare say the most intuitive interpretation overall would be "NHD only affects missiles created within the same cast of the same skill by the same unit".

If true, you would expect 0 NHD-blocking across players in a group environment (yay for that!) which seems to be supported with my experiences last night (see above). You would further expect very few instances of NHD actually still doing anything in solo play as well since only very few abilities are able to trigger multiple hits quick enough within a single cast to ever hit their NHD.
One of those however..is

Strafe. And that one kinda is why I'm asking if you've done any true controlled testing so far. Based on the presumed-correct interpretation above,

Strafe would still be affected by NHD if you're looking at single-target use because the mid-volley

Arrows very easily drop down to 3 or even 2 frame intervals at a 4 frame NHD. As a result, every other arrow should be unable to actually hit, even post-patch. And yet, I feel like I've seen back to back mid-volley hits repeatedly last night which would imply that it isn't just "per cast" but actually "per missile", taking the possible NHD impact down to only extremely few true Edge cases of the same projectile getting more than 1 hit in somehow (something like

Twister hitting a target which is then immediately knocked back by something else along the same path and gets hit again by the same

Twister right away [the 2nd hit would then be blocked by NHD]).

Now, assuming I actually saw that correctly, strafezons just got a massive buff vs. bosses which you wouldn't necessarily expect from reading the notes.
The problem is..that's at best highly anecdotal evidence from random half-asleep observations while just messing around at 3am. So neither controlled testing nor otherwise something I'd want to really rely on.