D2R 2.6 PTR Patch Notes & Release Date - Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.6, Ladder 3 Start & Reset Guide

D2R 2.6 PTR Patch Notes & Release Date - Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.6, Ladder 3 Start & Reset Guide

2/2/2023 11:16:13 AM

Tag: D2R Ladder Guide

Some pretty significant changes will be coming based on community feedback from the Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.6 PTR to these new rune words. PezRadar just announced when D2R ladder season 3 is going live. Check our D2R patch 2.6 PTR and ladder 3 start guide so that you can get prepared in advance.

D2R 2.6 PTR & Ladder 3 Guide - Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.6 Release Date, Patch Notes & Changes

At the same time in this D2R 2.6 PTR guide, let's try to spark some discussion on the best way to change these rune words that we walk into Diablo 2 Resurrected season 3, we have a really nice addition to the collection of options for people to build. So just things to remember if you haven't already prepared your season 2 characters get everything into the shared stats that you want to save and everything onto the characters themselves. Considering that's all going to roll into a shared stash that you'll only be able to draw out of. After Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder season 3, those D2R class specific items will get destroyed. Next, let’s go over everything you need to know about D2R 2.6 PTR, patch notes, release date, changes, and tips.

D2R 2.6 Patch Notes Release Date

February 6 is the earliest we can expect to have the final D2R 2.6 patch notes. Likewise, we expect this patch to roll into season fairly quickly.

D2R Ladder Season 3 Release Date

So they wanted to give you all a heads up, so that they plan on the D2R season 3 start to occur on February 16th with season 2 ending the same day.

D2R Patch 2.6 PTR Patch Notes

1. Helmet Changes

One of the major things that we're seeing from people who don't just get rushed through hell completely skip the entire middle of the game, literally don't build a single

item until they're already level 85 and they've been sitting in public Chaos and Baal runs. People do play this game and not only that a lot of people play solo cell found, hardcore, don't like or don't have the time to trade, don't just get handouts, don't just play super meta options, but there are also people who play this game other than day one blizzard sorc tryhards.

For those people, the rune word helmets that were introduced to the D2R 2.6 patch are phenomenal options. Even the day-one try hard budget uber smiters are going to be using a ground helmet, no question. People who actually like to see their mercenary survive things like Chaos runs as well as Travincal runs are absolutely going to throw a Temper onto the mercenary as well. Then when fire damage is no longer an issue, Bulwark will easily be the best go-to helmet for your mercenary before you find a best-in-slot option.

A lot of people say the word Rockstopper a lot. There's no monster in the game that you can go kill that when you kill them will give you a rock stopper 100% of the time. It doesn't exist that's just not how Diablo 2 item drops work. Now that being said there are deterministic farming strategies that you can employ one of them being the Countess. You can choose to go build a Bulwark, you can choose to go build a Temper or a Ground, you can even choose to go build a Cure, what you can't choose is to drop a Tal Rasha's helmet, a Rockstopper and Andariel's Visage, etc.

Anybody who looks at Bulwark and says this item isn't good enough, but what does a Shael, Io, or Sol rune typically do for you in a 3 socket helmet? None of them have ever said life leech, hit recovery, maximum life vitality, physical damage reduced by, and flat damage reduction. This item isn't fantastic. Two of the items do need something else for them to actually see use in the D2R PTR 2.6.

-While Cure and a Venom Ward on act 2 mercenary mean that while you're farming Nightmare and Andariel on your sorceress, you could actually expect him to be able to survive the fight. That being said the helmet outside of that and on the immortal sorceress just does not have a home for use. We would recommend adding a level 1 cleansing aura when equipped on this item and all of a sudden you've opened up a ton of options. Considering you can run a prayer merc with an Insight which will get a meditation aura that double dips on your prayer buff. They also have a cleansing ore on that mercenary, meaning you'd get three times their prayer buff bonus, opens up a ton of options alone if you just do that.

-Hearth itself literally needs to say cannot be frozen. The issue with this helmet isn't that it's bad in any way shape or form. It's that Diablo 2 for whatever reason doesn't care about cold resistance or cold damage. The scariest monster in the game for cold damage is Mephisto and if you just stay in melee range he doesn't hit you with his ice ball and in any other situation it just doesn't matter. If Hearth said cannot be frozen and that's all you added to it right now. You would have an actual viable option that will also see its use in the early and mid-late game on a mercenary. Because being able to put cannot be frozen on them without a chamron is incredibly difficult.

2. Hot Take Alert

The best rune word that they've added to the Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.6 PTR and that's Hustle in a weapon. Hustle in a weapon especially in a bow for Amazon with one point in strafe means that within 5-10 seconds of walking out into your farming area or even traveling to your farming area like if you're doing cow runs, you will have a burst of speed proct. The cool part about it is you don't need to have Harmony on swap and you can also swap out a ton of increased attack speed jewels on your primary character build meaning that you open up both your helmet and your armor for more damage or enigma.

In the early game, Hustle is just a fantastic bow for an early-game Amazon. It also increases the overall damage output on both fire and ice maiden. Because with the buff, you're able to hit your max breakpoint considering the majority of your gear needs to have facets in it to actually do enough damage to run those builds, even Plague and Lightning Fury Javazon get a huge buff from this because you're able to hit the max IES breakpoint without needing 640 javelins. All in all, the Amazon is the biggest winner with the pre-buff from Hustle as well as just using it as an early-game weapon.

Hustle in any other weapon for a Barbarian is also a phenomenal fit allows you to use stronger base weapons and still hit the max ios breakpoint that you weren't able to previously hit without using something like a Grief. A lot of the commentary that we're seeing about the need to pre-buff and basically the idea of fomo. There are a lot of people arguing for removing this option from the game because they personally don't want to pre-buff to min-max their character and because it exists they'll feel as if they need to. Because of that, we should not explore this design space in the game.

3. Hustle Armor

The Hustle armor on paper is pretty cool if you ignored the fact that you need to get the Ko. It just fails to actually support the gameplay style that it's trying to support. Hustle right now says when you are hard shopping for a particular base on an D2R unidentified item, you have the option to make your time between the load-in point and that merchant that much faster. It needs to say teleport charges, it just has to say teleport charges. There is no word where you use this armor at all unless it was free and you happen to be a melee character and you're already set on your resistances or you're literally doing the shopping, you just would not use the armor.

If you took out the Ko and made it a Tir rune, bare minimum, this thing immediately has some use such as faster run walk, increase attack speed, mana per kill along with hit recovery. Now it's actually good on a starter Amazon actually and good on a starter Barbarian, but as it stands right now as a stopgap between characters having no mobility and characters having enigma, it just doesn't succeed in that realm.

4. Mosaic

Mosaic is a really interesting weapon that needs to say either a 50% chance to not consume a charge. So that when you use two of them you will never consume your charges. Meaning that you can always choose how many charges you have and then just kick to your heart's content, always hitting, always releasing your charges, or using dragon claw to always be dishing out tons of tiger strike damage or using dragon tail without needing to fully rebuff, so you can go attack the next pack, etc.

We're actually in the camp where Mosaic should say 100% chance to not consume your charge so that you can actually use a good weapon in your offhand to shore up your resistances or your damage or your plus skills or whatever else. Assassin typically needs martial arts Assassins that need the third charge to actually be viable. Putting on one of these to say you always get that benefit of the charge, now you just need to manage always having charges would be fine. Especially at the D2R rune price on the weapon.

Right now Mal, Gul does not warrant these stats and the percent advantage of not consumed charge that's currently on the weapon. We're not the only ones saying this it's not even a completely unique standpoint. Mosaic needs something either 50% or 100% and then we can really open up what the martial arts assassin is capable of doing.

5. Metamorphosis

Lastly because honestly metamorphosis the item itself is super awesome. The idea of putting in the time to pre-buff to get both bonuses realistically unless you are naturally a werewolf, most people are not going to worry about getting the werewolf buff, because of werebear buff is just so much more powerful. As an eight to Shockwave helmet, this thing is absolutely bananas. As in eight two werewolf canterbury and charles rage, it's super powerful. As a plus eight to fury in feral rage, it's also really nice. Even just an eight to rabies helmet in this thing is pretty bananas.

Now here's the problem and it's absolutely going to be fixed. The coding that they've put in place, so you can actually keep the buff while shifting between different forms had a little bit of an unforeseen consequence.

Conclusions

Keep that in mind, looks like February 16th is the official D2R start date of season 3 with season 2 ending on that same day. February 16th puts us on a Thursday in just over two and a half weeks with pretty significant changes happening to the Diablo 2 Resurrected rune words that have been revealed and that we're able to test during this PTR. So final patch notes as of next Monday and then two and a half weeks from to today we're rolling into Diablo 2 ladder season 3. So take your time off from work and get ready!