PvP, a feature promised shortly after the game’s launch, will finally be added to Blizzard’s dungeon crawler.
When Diablo III launched in May last year, developer Blizzard promised us that the PvP patch would be put out “shortly after release” and include a Team Deathmatch game mode. As “shortly” became half a year, Blizzard made a blog post detailing their plans for PvP. Most surprising was the fact that the Team Deathmatch game mode had been completely scrapped, and that a patch consisting of basic duelling would be released “some time after the new year.” That time has come, as patch 1.07 is scheduled to go live on Wednesday in all regions.
Duelling is a new feature accessed by speaking to “Nek the Brawler,” an NPC located in New Tristram. He will teleport up to four players to a specially designed duelling world, where players can duke it out for bragging rights. Dying has no penalty for duelling players – your gear won’t take any damage and you will be instantly resurrected. Even hardcore characters can join in the fun, as duel-induced deaths are not permanent.
Also included in the patch are some changes to the Wizard and Monk classes, a new tier of gems, a new crafting reagent and some crafting recipes to go along with it. Wizard and Monks are getting buffs to some lesser-utilized spells such as the Wizard’s Arcane Orb and the Monk’s Exploding Palm. The new tier of gem, the Marquise Gem, has stats in line with the current gem progression, and will cost you three Radiant Star Gems, 20 million gold and one of the new crafting reagents to create.
The new crafting reagent and recipes seems to indicate the success of patch 1.05’s Infernal Machine event, which allowed players to collect reagents from bosses and craft a legendary ring. In 1.07, Players will be able to collect “Demonic Essences” from elite monsters, which can in turn be used in five new crafting recipes to create rare quality armor. Players can choose the primary stat of an item when crafting it (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence) meaning that they can take a little bit of randomness out of the RNG.
The patch is the third “major” content patch of Diablo III, following patch 1.04 which introduced the Paragon leveling system, and 1.05 which introduced the Infernal Machine event and Monster Power. You can read the full 1.07 patch notes here.
Source: Battle.net Forums
