Diablo III Patch v2.6.1 Live

Patch v2.6.1 for Diablo III, that was promised to revise the game’s balance and make as many playstyles viable as possible, is now live in the Americas for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The other regions should be receiving the patch shortly. You can check out the full patch notes on the official website, and here are the patch highlights and the class-specific changes:

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

• Class Set Revisions
  • We’ve taken a top-down look across all class performance in Greater Rifts, and made several changes to bring as many gameplay styles as close in line to each other as possible, with a focus on the most popular or requested builds.
• Skill Changes
  Several skills have had their overall power buffed, while others have been tweaked for improved playability and performance.
• Item Revisions
  • Numerous Legendary items have seen tweaks, yielding increased power for players to enjoy.

[…]

CLASSES

• Barbarian Skills
  • Battle Rage
    • Bloodshed
      • Has been redesigned:
      • Deal damage equal to 20% of your recent Critical Hits to enemies within 20 yards every 1 second.
      • Note: Bloodshed caused performance issues when encountering high enemy density, particularly when combined with Whirlwind, Pain Enhancer, and Gem of Efficacious Toxin.
  • Ground Stomp
    • Jarring Slam
      • Added a maximum threshold on the number of health globes that can spawn in a given time.
• Crusader Skills
  • Blessed Hammer
    • Limitless
      • Has been redesigned:
      • Increase the damage of Blessed Hammer to 640% weapon damage as Holy and increase its area of effect by 20 yards.
      • Note: The extra projectiles created by this rune were causing performance issues in cases with high enemy density.
• Monk Skills
  • Tempest Rush
    • Flurry
      • Reduced the maximum number of stacks from 500 to 100
• Necromancer Skills
  • Command Skeletons
    • Commanding your Skeletal Warriors will break crowd control effects on them
    • Skeletal Warriors will no longer die after taking too many hits
    • Design Philosophy: When we were first designing Command Skeletons, we wanted to capture the feeling of being an undead commander by having skeletons regularly spawn around the Necromancer and charge into battle during combat. It created a cool visual, but as the class evolved through Set bonuses and Legendary powers, it became clear that this visual began to hinder gameplay for some builds. Skeletal Warriors now have the same defenses as all other pets in the game.
  • Devour
    • Voracious
      • Resource cost reduction stacks granted from this rune will now stack and are no longer overridden from multiple casts.
  • Simulacrum
    • Added a glow to the skill icon to indicate when Simulacrum is active.
  • Skeletal Mage
    • This skill will now display the duration of the oldest mage raised as a buff in addition to the total number of mages active
    • Design Philosophy: This change is largely to provide transparency to players on the duration of their mage armor. This will be especially useful to players using the Bones of Rathma set. It’s our goal that players will no longer feel compelled to refresh their Skeletal Mage counter when they’re already at max.
  • Bone Armor
    • Essence cost removed
    • Can now be cast while moving
  • Army of the Dead
    • Frozen Army
      • The pulsing damage from this rune has been spread out
      • Design Philosophy: This was done to ensure enemies within range are evenly hit and to better align with the visual. This will result in more targets being hit more consistently for the stated weapon damage amount.
• Necromancer Passives
  • Fueled By Death
    • The movement speed bonus from this passive can now exceed the 25% cap
  • Life from Death
    • Added a maximum threshold on the number of health globes that can spawn in a given time.
• Witch Doctor Skills
  • Soul Harvest
    • Adding a stack or refreshing Soul Harvest now refreshes all stacks of Soul Harvest.
• Witch Doctor Passives
  • Creeping Death
    • Increased the duration of Haunt, Locust Swarm, and the damage amplification of Piranhas when this passive is active from 3600 to 19800 seconds
• Wizard Skills
  • Arcane Orb
    • Frozen Orb
      • Create an orb of frozen death that shreds an area with ice bolts, dealing 393% 950% weapon damage as Cold
      • Increased projectile travel distance from 30 to 40
• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed an issue which prevented Army of the Dead from sometimes triggering when the player is immediately afflicted by a monster’s crowd control after casting it
  • Fixed an issue where enemy monsters could heal themselves when striking another monster afflicted by Leech
  • Fixed a bug which caused Skeletal Mages to sometimes spawn up in the air
  • Fixed an issue where the firewall left behind by Arcane Orb – Scorch was not dealing damage
  • Fixed an issue which caused Skeletal Mages to lose their target when players used Command Skeletons to attack the same target
  • Fixed an issue which caused connection issues when players used a channeling skill while attempting to force move at the same time
  • Fixed an issue where your pets would double dip from the damage bonus granted by Wolf Companion
  • Fixed an issue where the advanced tooltip for Bone Armor – Dislocation did not correctly state the rune did Poison damage
  • Fixed an issue where Furious Charge would inherit the elemental damage type on your weapon when Vile Ward was equipped, as opposed to the damage type of the rune you chose
  • Fixed an issue where Bone Armor: Dislocation did not apply the movement and attack speed reduction provided by Rigor Mortis
  • Fixed an issue where Monk players could reset the Blood is Power cooldown for Necromancers allowing them to gain more cool down reduction than intended
  • Fixed an issue where Creeping Death was not correctly affecting the duration of the Piranha’s damage debuff
  • Fixed an issue where the tooltip for Spike Trap – Impaling Spines did not display its correct damage type
  • Fixed an issue where the tooltip for Bone Armor – Harvest of Anguish did not display its correct damage type