Diablo 3's latest patch toughens up Crusaders, hands out more gold

The latest patch for Diablo III, bringing the game up to version 2.0.5, introduces a wide range of changes to all classes, including making the Crusader--the class added in the Reaper of Souls expansion--both tougher and capable of doing more damage.

Each of the six classes have been modified, some more extensively than others. The Crusader, which is intended to be the game's toughest class, has finally had its damage reduction perk increased from 15% to 30%, matching that of the Monk and Barbarian. Meanwhile, many of the damage-dealing abilities the class has now do more damage. The Crusader's passive abilities have also been reworked, as the patch notes state, "Rather than try to simply change numbers on existing passives we've tried to provide interesting and compelling choices."

The list of changes for five of the game's six classes (the Demon Hunter being the exception) note that a number of runes are having their damage types changed. "To better support character builds based on a specific damage type we are changing the damage type of a few select runes," the patch notes read. "This is an ongoing goal - additional changes may be made in the future to any of our classes to make damage types an interesting consideration for character building."

In addition to removing the 300% cap on items and Paragon Points, Blizzard is also changing the way Gold Find bonuses work. "Gold Find on items will now stack multiplicatively with the Gold Find bonus provided from game difficulty," Blizzard said. In effect, this will "significantly" increase the amount of gold found by players on higher difficulties, which is demonstrated with the following example: "Suppose you are playing on Master (+200% Gold Find) and have 50% Gold Find awarded from items. A pile of gold drops that would normally be 50 gold. Your Difficulty bonus increases the 50 gold to 150 gold. Your 50% Gold Find will now increase the 150 gold to 225 gold."

Perhaps best of all, one of the game's single most annoying (albeit ultimately unimportant) issues will be resolved by reducing a certain NPC's chatter while in town: "Tyrael will now chat about his poor eating habits with less frequency."

The full list of patch notes can be found on Blizzard's website. But be aware if you try to play, there are reports of the game crashing following the patch's release, particularly when entering Nephalem Rifts, so it may be wise to avoid those for the time being.