1. Blizzard released the PTR patch notes that stated the following:

"Changed how attack speed is determined while transformed as a Werewolf. Attack speeds while transformed should match attack speeds while untransformed (enhanced by the Werewolf's increased attack speed)."

2. The shapeshifting community rejoiced, thinking that Blizzard was going to fix the long-standing problems with IAS while in wereform. Mostly, they thought that Blizzard was going to reinstate the IAS "bug" pre-2.3 where you could get IAS from all of your gear, not just your weapon, which would allow for incredible build and gear diversity. The reason why they thought this is because druids, in human form, can get IAS from all of their gear, not just a weapon, so this seemed to match what the PTR notes said. Everyone got stoked.

3. The PTR was released and the community realized they had gravely misinterpreted the PTR patch notes. When the PTR was released a few days ago, wolf druids immediately realized they could not even clear Hell with BIS gear because they were attacking too slow, no matter what weapon or gear you had on. The PTR patch notes actually meant something far worse than what the community thought - to put it briefly, it means that the wolf druid's IAS table is gone and now adheres to the human druid IAS table. This is an insane and build-ending change for a wolf druid, because human druids cannot attack faster than 10 fpa. This means that, currently in the PTR, wolf druids or werebears can't get past 10fpa, even though most of us are very used to attacking at 4fpa. This change actually makes wolf druids unplayable as they can no longer attack fast enough to proc certain things to stay alive, such as life tap, open wounds, deadly strike, or whatever else. It also means it simply takes too long for you to drain an enemy's health because the attacks are too slow - something else will kill you much quicker before you can kill it. And, just to make this crystal clear, making the maximum 10fpa for wolf druids means that you basically can get all the IAS that you can get from simply maxing out your proper skills and wearing normal gear. You can only benefit from a maximum of 11% IAS on your gear now. Anything beyond that does not count, so this change basically makes IAS a thing of the past for wolf druids because we will always attack slow, no matter what. This would be especially true in PVP scenarios where other melee builds are attacking at much faster rates than us. As a result, the player base caused a huge uproar immediately upon the PTR release, accusing Blizzard of killing the entire shapeshifting skill tree. Actually, the change was so egregious, so drastic, and constitutes one of the biggest nerfs in Diablo's history, so many people thought this was actually a mistake and Blizzard did not intend for this change. The community awaited a response from Blizzard to hopefully clarify this was an error and the change would be immediately reverted.

4. Blizzard responded relatively quickly. Their developers put out a statement that was low-key condescending and patronizing. Feel free to read it here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/druid-ww-and-wb-attack-speed-changes/102171
Except, you don't need to read it, really, because instead of Blizzard admitting they essentially introduced a bug by mistake (by making the maximum fpa only 10), they doubled down on their change and basically told the community to go fk themselves. Their post explicitly phrases the change as "beneficial" and, if you read in between the lines, it actually says that the player base has no idea what's going on and has yet to take advantage of the "beneficial" and amazing changes Blizzard has implemented. Blizzard's suggestion, as you can read toward the bottom of their post, is for the shapeshifting community to calm the hell down and go "explore" different weapons to use.

5. What you are seeing now is outrage at Blizzard doubling down on their mistake and the death of the shapeshifting skill tree. Blizzard's community manager has already acknowledged the backlash and said they are going to try and fix it in this PTR, but the developers still have not released any further statements beyond the one I linked above. So, as far as the community is concerned, the developers' official statement is that this is still a beneficial change and, if we're lucky, they will try to work around it to appease the player base. The wereform player base also lost all trust in the developers because their original intent going into the PTR was to buff shapeshifting classes, and instead they immediately killed their viability upon PTR release. Everyone is very confused at this change and how Blizzard is essentially framing the worst nerf in the game's history as a beneficial "buff."

tl;dr - Blizzard said they were buffing shapeshifting builds, they ended up nerfing them to the point they are unplayable (literally), they are still standing by their belief that it is still somehow a buff, they are taking a long time to say they were wrong, shapeshifting community is going more frustrated/anxious each hour the developers refuse to acknowledge this error because if it somehow makes it into the live version of the game, you'll no longer be able to play any shapeshifting class

Nice write up: this is exactly what happened. Reminds me of the Jay Wilson times.

And, for some added context, here is the developers' response for their "motivations" behind the change:


"There are a few motivations for this change:

1. Because of the extraordinary weight weapon attack speed had on transformed attack speeds, high weapon attack speed was overwhelmingly the most important consideration for which weapon to equip. This change should encourage more diversity in weapon selection.
2. The quirky attack speed calculation was a poor player experience for those not in the know - in particular at lower levels of play without optimized weapons. While this change has reduced attack speed when using weapons with very high IAS, it has increased attack speed for the majority of weapons - especially weapons encountered at lower levels of play."

If you know anything about Diablo, you know these motivations are these developers having good intentions but the poorest execution that you've ever seen.

1. Clearly, they are concerned here that wolf druids were largely limited to high-IAS weapons. Rather than making the obviously more beneficial change (i.e., allowing wolf druids to get IAS from all of their gear, and not just weapons), they simply made all weapons slower. This does achieve their intended desire here to encourage more diversity in weapon selection because, as far as IAS goes, you can use literally any weapon you want and it will attack at the same devastatingly slow speeds. As stated a few posts ago, this basically makes most weapons in the game viable, but makes the build non-playable.
2. They did not like the "quirkiness" of the IAS calculations for wereform. The developers were clearly unhappy here that newer players to Diablo would not understand how the hell IAS worked in wereform because, lets be honest, it has always been pretty confusing, especially to new players. However, this change did not make it any less confusing. New players will not know that wolf druids are capped to a slow 10fpa because this is what human druids are capped to (new players don't even know what fpa means). Also, new players don't know shit about shit - what kind of new player knows the math and mechanics behind all of the different FCR and FHR breakpoints or the countless other "quirky" crap this game has? The general consensus is that you need to do at least a minimal amount of research to be able to play this game well. No one knows why the IAS mechanics in wereform has been targeted as a way to help new players become more familiar with the game. They also are sacrificing all end-game play just so newer players at lower levels understand what is going on a bit better and have some viability. Players only put in a handful of hours while leveling at low levels - they spend THOUSANDS of hours at end-game. Again, no one knows why Blizzard was so willing to sacrifice end-game play so that leveling starting at lvl 30 when you can use fury is 2% easier.

how f*cking disappointing

any new posts in regards to them fixing it?

Thanks for the recap. Let’s hope they change it.
Edit - I am really enjoying playing this furyndruid to level up right now. It was never very viable in pvp anyway so really needs a proper buff!

This post was edited by Pimpslapper on Jan 30 2022 01:27am

No but the forums are exploding on B.net and reddit. I hope they fix this and give it uninterrupted on Fury. Plus stuff like Aldurs weapon. Giving a bad block to a class, then make them use one handed weapon that can barely hit 7-8 frames with no damage.

Then IK maul and Gris caddy is better for Druids while barbs can hit max WW with maul and pallys can hit max zeal speed without fana. Why can’t they see the obvious? Druids are better off using IK set as their set instead of Aldurs.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jan 30 2022 01:38am

Not that I've seen, but i've taken a break from anything blizzard-related since they released this PTR so I dont know whats going on atm

my guess is they doing this in weekly increments so we will prolly hear or see an updated or change on tuesday

I think so, I guess we will see, I think it can’t be worst than it is, but they have outdone themselves lol