If you pay a casual trip to Blizzard’s Diablo III forums, you’ll find whole lot of people whining about lack of things to do once they’ve hit the level cap. In an attempt to address this and to encourage people to try out more diverse character builds, Blizzard is currently rolling out Patch 1.0.4 — quite probably the biggest patch yet in terms of adding new features and balancing various characters.

One of the biggest complaints has been the level cap — beyond 60, your character stops growing and for a RPG game, character growth is quite possibly one of the biggest motivators in keeping you hooked onto the game. To combat this, Blizzard has unveiled what they term as the “Paragon” system.

With the Paragon system, players level up to 60. Post that

• Any further experience earned killing monsters will begin to count toward Paragon levels
• There are 100 Paragon levels
• Every Paragon level results will reward the character with:
  • Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
  • 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find
• A border will surround the character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote the Paragon progression. A new frame will be earned after every ten levels

Besides the Paragon system, the patch brings in a lot more changes including:

• Magic Find and Gold Find is now capped at 300%
• Health of normal monsters is increased by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno. Health of Champions and Rares is reduced by 10-25%
• The likelihood that normal monsters drop magic or rare items is increased by a factor of four
• Minion monsters are no longer invulnerable
• Legendary items are improved, both in terms of damage done and bonuses offerered as well as their ingame animations
• Lot of changes for all characters — Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Demon Hunter and the Witch Doctor
• Auction house improvements: Auctions can now be cancelled at any time, provided there are no active bids on them, allowed number of “Preferred Stats” per search is increased from 3 to 6.
• Nephalem Valor now grants +15% Bonus Experience per stack, as well as +15% to Magic Find and Gold Find
• Magic Find is no longer averaged among all players in a multiplayer game

You can review all the changes the patch brings in from the patch notes. Patch will be applied at approximately following times, across different server regions:

• The Americas: 3:00 a.m. PDT to 1:00 p.m. PDT (8/21)
• Europe: 8:00 p.m. PDT (8/21) to 6:00 a.m. PDT (8/22)
• Asia: 11:00 a.m. PDT to 11:00 p.m. PDT (8/22)

Despite all these much welcome changes, the PvP system is yet to come, and is expected to arrive in Patch 1.1, whenever that gets released. We’ll keep you posted on other major patch changes as and when they occur. Drop a comment  if you think the patch changes will improve your Diablo III experience.